Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken – Review (PSN)
| Game Name: | Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken |
| Platforms: | PSN |
| Publisher(s): | Ratloop Asia |
| Developer(s): | Ratloop Asia |
| Genre(s): | Cinematic Platformer |
| Release Date: | Available Now |
| ESRB Rating: | Mature |
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a rare bird: a spirited, modern actualization of the cinematic platformer sub-genre popularized in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s by games like Prince of Persia, Flashback, and Another World. As in those classics, your protagonist, Hardboiled (or, as the developers like to call him, “the original Coq of War”), doesn’t skip and jump through fanciful and surreal levels with the heightened, arcady physics one is accustomed to from most platformers. Instead, he inhabits a relatively realistic world of military bases, airships, and dilapidated war-torn cities, which he traverses carefully and deliberately, his jumping ability limited to that of a human of above-average athleticism.
This world, known as Albatropolis, is inhabited by anthropomorphized birds, oppressed by a totalitarian regime of evil penguins. The penguins rule over the other bird species from their fleet of airships, inundating them with constant Soviet-inspired propaganda, and urging them (as in the 1988 John Carpenter cult classic They Live) to “OBEY.” It’s up to Hardboiled, a super-soldier who has broken his conditioning, to bring down the regime by killing its leader: dictator Putzki. He doesn’t have to fulfill this task completely alone, though, as a resistance movement of valiant budgies has also formed to bring down the penguins.
Hardboiled goes about taking down Putzki and his army by shooting and puzzling his way through a variety of dryly amusing war zones with an assortment of satisfying weapons and tools. Old favorites like the MP5, M60, AK-47 and explosive grenade are effective and fun, but there’s nothing I personally found more enjoyable than using the Brain Bug, a mind control grenade that enables you to take over enemy soldiers and have them turn on their penguin kin. This particular grenade is also essential for puzzle-solving, as you can use it to make enemies pull switches and open doors for you. Most of the puzzles revolve around opening up new paths through the levels by activating switches, moving crates and collecting keycards. They rarely feel like busywork, offer the right amount of challenge, and are a welcome change of pace from all the shooting.
Another way Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken breaks up its standard action is through aerial combat sequences, affectionally referred to as “jetpacktion” by its hero just before rocketing skyward to take out some penguin dirigibles. Here the camera pulls out to a far-off view that gives you ample room for maneuvering as you go up against armies of jetpacked penguin soldiers. Dodging their machine gun fire and using their heat-seeking rockets against them is a pleasing diversion, and the transition between being on foot and in the air is seamless.
The game offers both an analog and a digital control scheme, allowing you to guide your character with either the left analog stick or the D-pad. I found the D-pad preferable when on the ground and the analog stick superior when in the air, but thankfully the game was smartly designed so you don’t have to go in a menu and change control schemes every time you switch between modes. When you’re in the air, both the analog stick and the D-pad will work to control Hardboiled, no matter what scheme you have selected for the rest of the game.
In addition to the fairly substantial single-player campaign, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken also offers a local cooperative campaign. Here, you and a co-op buddy play as budgie resistance fighters on a quest to save their general’s daughter. Mechanically, the co-op campaign is identical to the main game, but the addition of another player allows for some interesting puzzle and encounter design. Disappointingly, there are no online co-op options.
Though Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a PlayStation Network exclusive, it started out as a smaller, browser-based game under the title Rocketbirds: Revolution!, which garnered bounteous critical accolades and was a grand prize finalist at the 2010 Independent Games Festival, where it was also nominated for excellence in visual art and audio. Playing Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken now, the acclaim for its forerunner is easy to understand. Visually, aurally, and thematically, it is an unequivocally stunning game.
The game’s character animations are fluid in the same way classic cinematic platformers of yesteryear were. The most apt modern comparison I can think of are games like Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Shank, though unlike the latter title, you won’t have nearly as much trouble interrupting ongoing animations. The terrific character designs and animations are more than matched by the striking, richly detailed art style of the game’s environments. I’m a sucker for seeing old-fashioned 2D graphics done in glorious HD, but developer Ratloop Asia went even further by rendering each of their 225 game screens in full 3D, then mapping the original 2D textures onto them. This allowed them to implement true parallaxing to add depth to the scenes, as well as to add full stereoscopic 3D support. Never running below 60fps at 720p, the effect is subtle, visually arresting, and difficult to describe in a mere text review – I highly recommend looking at some footage of the game in motion.
The cinematics are similarly striking. Though there’s the occasional droll dialogue scene to be had, mostly they unfold as tightly-paced montages cut to a fuzzy, psychedelic wall of sound provided by sci-fi rock Indie band New World Revolution. Some montages simply indulge in the badassery of Hardboiled, but others are surprisingly heartbreaking, examining his past conditioning to be a killing machine in poignant flashbacks. In the same vein, the generic enemy soldiers you kill by the hundreds are humanized through overheard conversations displayed as dialogue bubbles during gameplay. Also, it would be a crime to spoil the ending; suffice it to say it is both astounding and delightful. What probably surprised me most about Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken was the realization that this is a game with a philosophy and eloquent things to say about the nature of war.
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is priced at a reasonable $11.99. It is a perfectly realized game and one of my personal favorites this year. If you enjoy a good cinematic platformer, you owe it to yourself to pick it up.
