I'd known about this game for quite awhile, I remember watching the first trailer to come out for it with some friends of mine. Laughing at the silly graphics, we shrugged off the trailer, and went about our business. Time passed, and a few months later, a new trailer came out. We couldn't believe that this was seriously happening, and after watching it, we were horrified. In the official trailer, no less, there was a helicopter no-clipping through the damn ground. This could not bode well by any means. With the release date immanent, I decided that I'd try it out to see how bad it really was.
After downloading the game and installing it, I ran the launcher. Heading to the video tab, I maxed out the settings like a respectable human being, and laughed a little bit at how the development team was so cheap they had to use a slider to handle the graphics levels, though, we'll come back to this shortly. I booted up the game, and was taken to the immensely underwhelming main menu. Now, I'm fully aware that the main menu does not make a game, but you can at least get a good idea of how much love and care was put into the game (or money, at least) by the main menu. Remember Halo 3's main menu? That was a good main menu, they put work into making it good just like the rest of the game. Rambo's menu is like that lazy family member always walking around in dirty cloths, you know, the one who can never be bothered to change into something clean? It's just kind of there, regardless of how you feel about it. Anyway, it was time to start up the campaign.
Do you enjoy the Rambo movies? I hope so, because every expense was spared in this game in terms of voice actors. Why bother to hire a voice actor when you can rip the lines you want directly from the film!? But that's only the tip of the iceburg. Within about 3 seconds of the mission starting, I began to realize that I seemed to be killing a lot of the same people. Yes, they looked strangely alike. In fact, for a moment, I was under the impression I was either fighting the Grand Army of the Republic, or the developers had been too lazy to use more than one model in the game. I think you can guess which one it was. Rambo proceeded to run around like an idiot (this game is a rail shooter, if you didn't know), soaking up bullets like it was his job. Yes, he would just stand out in the open in some points, because apparently getting shot at is a minor concern. You really don't need to worry though, because the game introduces two mechanics right at the beginning that make something as simple as bullets an asinine worry. The first is the cover system, or as I like to call it, the bob and weave system. Here's how to succeed in Rambo, simply pick a target, and duck up and down behind cover while holding down the trigger button. Eventually, it will die, and you'll have taken little to no damage. The next thing introduced is the Wrath system. Or, as it should be called, John Rambo stepped on a Lego and got mad system. When activating the Wrath system, Rambo screams the soul crushing scream of a man who has stepped barefooted onto a Lego. As silly as this is, this is the only other mechanic needed to beat the game. You see, the Wrath system makes you invincible for a short period of time, and also allows you to restore health as you kill things. Combined with the bob and weave system, it's nearly impossible to die if you put in even 0.5% of effort into this game. It's the only way to get through this repetative lump of a game.
Now, for the sake of length, I'm going to round this up by speaking on a few more aspect of the game that left a bad taste in my mouth. The first is that graphics slider I mentioned earlier. It may just be my version of the game, but there is no difference between the game on low and high graphics, and if there is, it's so tiny it's impossible to see. I compared the level I was playing on both settings, and I seriously could notice no difference. My second issue is the game crashing. Apparently, Rambo is so good that it can't run correctly, crashing for me within 5 minutes of starting the game. I'm aware others have had constant crashes throughout the game, and it's sad. Next, Rambo has a perk system, and it's absolutely useless. I dumped all my points into extending my Wrath meter, because everything else was pointless. Why even have it there? Lastly, the models, animation, and textures look pathetic in some cases. For example, look at Rambo's arms, it's like two hot dogs pasted together. His fingers in third person moments are pasted together in a fashion you would have expected from the early 2000s, and the "sweat" texture on is body often causes me to mistake him for a vampire.
To conclude, Rambo The Video Game is pathetic, and has no justified form of existence other than life in a trash bin. With horribly repetative gameplay, bad sounds and animation, lazy developers who couldn't even bother to get voice actors, constant crashing, and a graphics slider that does nothing, this game is truly bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. Don't buy this game. Not even to see how bad it is. You'll thank me later.
