PC Game Review: Rad Rodgers

GAME: Rad Rodgers
DEVELOPER: Slipgate Studios
PUBLISHER: 3D Realms / THQ Nordic
YEAR: 2018

Rad Rodgers is the third game to come from Slipgate Studios, following in the wake of their 3D Realms revival with Rise Of The Triad 2013 and Bombshell, both made when they were called Interceptor Entertainment. After a name change and a deal with THQ Nordic, their newest game Rad Rodgers has finally been released for PC as well as XBox One and PS4. So having just completed it, I feel it's about time I give my thoughts on Slipgates' newest title.

Rad Rodgers is at heart an early 90's platformer made with today's technology, taking influence from a slew of games, including Apogee classics such as Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and Commander Keen, and the Amiga classic Ruff'n'Tumble. It centers around the titular character, a young boy named Rad Rodgers (voiced by Hunter Pratt) who one evening after a lengthy session is sent to bed by his mother and immideately afterwards is sucked into his TV and finds not only is his game console Dusty (voiced by Jon St. Jon) alive, but he also has a pretty dirty sense of humor. The game quickly establishes its somewhat adult tone, similar to Conker's Bad Fur Day. And it makes it obvious that this game isn't marketed so much to kids as it's marketed to the people who grew up with these kinds of platformers and are more than old enough to handle foul language. The game does ship with a censor option though to bleep out the dirty words in case you want to spare your kids the worst of it.

World One in all its... overworld glory.

Anyway... back to the story. Apparently something has gone wrong in the game world and it's up to Rad and his pal Dusty to set things straight. Rad is immideately equipped a badass gun while Dusty helps out by smashing enemies with his arms and also has the power to enter rifts in the game's world that allows him to enter the "pixelverse", a world in which the game's very code can be changed and altered (kinda Matrix'y). And that's pretty much the only story the game has. What I love though is that it doesn't take itself too seriously, and has a lot of fun with its subject matter. All throughout the game there's a lot of banter between Rad and Dusty, a lot of it referencing pop culture but also establishing a bit of a brotherly vibe between the two (although Dusty is a bit more like that raunchy uncle who always tells dirty jokes at christmas parties). If crass humor is not your cup of tea, you might not be a big fan of the game but I found it pretty funny and I loved the personalities of Rad and Dusty and how they compliment each other. Rad being a child is pretty much either oblivious to Dusty's innuendo (which is proven by him staring awkwardly at the camera when Dusty makes a raunchy joke in the opening cutscene for the first level) or calls it gross. He always acts exactly how you'd expect a child to act and is even voiced by a real boy, making him feel like a pretty authentic character. His references are suitably "modern", spouting lines such as "git gud" and "do you even play?". At times he kinda sounds like those annoying 14-year olds you meet in Call of Duty but I suppose this was the intent. It never bothered me anyway. There's not a lot of story in the game but there is a ton of personality and unique humor.

The game features a "photo mode" which pauses the game and allows you to run the camera through the game world and take some pretty cinematic screenshots. Neato!

The game is probably one of the best platformers I've played in recent memory. Controls are incredibly tight (just how I like it...?) and the difficulty curve in the levels is just right with early levels being fairly easy and the last couple of levels being true challenges. In addition to your standard gun you also have powerups that give your gun special ammunition, including rapid fire, shooting phoenix-shaped fire blasts, lobbing grenades and firing a solid beam of death (can you say kamehameha?). The game also has three difficulty modes, with easy giving you endless lives and 4 hearts, with each heart pickup giving you 2 hearts, medium giving you 3 hearts (with heart pickups giving you 1 heart) and limited lives, and finally hard restricting you to 2 hearts (with heart pickups giving half a heart) and limited lives (which is the difficulty I used for this playthrough since I wanted a real challenge). It has to be said that the hard difficulty is probably what you should go with if you want an actual challenge as the game IS fairly easy all things considered (with the exception of the the last few levels which proved quite challenging).

Hats are a collectible in the game, each of them adding some variety to Rad's look (and even showing up in cutscenes).

One of the things I love the most about the game is how it truly feels like a 90's platformer that's been remade with modern graphics. The gameplay is consistently 2D and relies on classic and familiar traps and situations. It's very easy to feel at home in the game if you grew up with these kind of platformers. And if you have OCD then you might wanna look away from this game. The game not only contains a ton of secrets but also collectibles in the form of hats, hidden bonus coins and achievements for completing the levels 100% (grabbing all the gems and finding all the secrets as well as killing all enemies). The bonuses definitely feel like a callback to Duke Nukem where you'd get rewarded for killing all enemies in a level and such. I kinda wish there were more hidden bonuses but it's still a pretty fun experience and makes it worth replaying levels just to get that 100% score.

Slipgate has a bit of a track record for releasing buggy games but it's with a relief I can say that Rad Rodgers is probably the smoothest and most bug-free experience I've ever had from them. I didn't run into any serious glitches or bugs at all during my playthrough and overall had a really good time with the game.

Midlevel checkpoints take the form of floppy disks (with an accompanying floppy drive noise)

Graphically the game looks stunning. It has a very cartoony art style with a ton of colours and really good lighting effects (as to be expected from an UE4 game). At times the game does tend to look a little busy and it can make the levels a bit confusing at first but once you get into it, it becomes almost second nature to try and spot secrets in the levels which are fairly often very well clues. There's also a ton of little details and easter eggs in the level designs and since the cutscenes are rendered in real time, little details like the hat you're wearing will show up in them. I was able to run the game maxed out on my Phenom II 3.2 GHz PC with a 3GB R9 280X graphics card and getting a pretty decent framerate across the board (which speaks tons about how much the game has been optimized compared to the earlier "World One" version). You could definitely easily get a stable 60 FPS on a modern PC with this game even on maxed out settings.

The pixelverse, a sort of TRON-like world where you can interact with the game's code.

The sound is also really good with a few nitpicks we'll get to in a bit. First off I really wanna compliment the soundtrack. Andrew Hulshult has gone for more of a synthwave soundtrack with this game (reminiscent of games like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon) mixed with his signature guitar solos and it really is a combination that works brilliantly and makes me wish he'd make more in this style. As opposed to his earlier outings with Bombshell the music in this game pops with really awesome melodies and riffs, heavy synthy basslines rumble in the background while his badass guitar solos are sprinkled on top. Definitely makes me want to listen to the soundtrack on its own. It's not as memorable as Giana Sisters, but it's definitely extremely pleasant to listen to and fits the game's whole retro vibe perfectly. The voice acting is also pretty great. Hunter Pratt voices Rad and using a real child actor as opposed to something like a female voice actor helps give Rad a very authentic sounding voice. He's of course not exactly a great actor and at times can sound a bit underwhelming but it can be forgiven given he's a child actor. Jon St Jon is also a ton of fun as Dusty and doing other minor voices in the game.
The sound design in general is pretty solid with the gun sounds and explosions being fairly satisfying. I do sort of miss more environmental sounds but what sounds are there do help keep you tuned in to what you need to pay attention to so too much noise might have worked against the sound's function.
I did run into some glitches with the sound though. Whenever I lowered the game's master volume, certain sounds would still play at full volume, more specifically the loading screen sound and the death sound of the larger enemies. Nothing too serious, but worth mentioning.

A pixelverse portal. The closer you get to these, the more the game will look corrupted and glitchy (a pretty neat effect).

All in all, Rad Rodgers is a beautiful love letter to the early 90's and at the same time feels fresh and has its own unique sense of humor that will definitely appeal to adults. If you grew up with PC platformers like Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen, I highly recommend giving Rad Rodgers a try! My only real complaint so far is that the game is really short since only World One has been completed, but given they are working on the game I hope for World Two and Three soon enough! This is by far Slipgate Studios' best game so far and barring a few minor bugs the game is a thoroughly enjoyable experience in my opinion.

STORY: 8/10

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

GRAPHICS: 9/10

SOUND: 9/10

TOTAL SCORE: 9/10