Oh boy. I had Rampage for the PSX back when I was about 7 and I must have spent a hundred hours playing it. It was easily my favourite of the old arcade games from before my time, so I can totally relate to the sinpiration here. Then, as a teen furry I was there for The Bedfellows when they popped up as a funny comedy porn comic like a furry Oglaf. Then I was enthralled with their bout of animations on YouTube. Then I played this game and was unfortunately underwhelmed. Then I tried Rampage and didn't have much fun with that anymore either. However, I do think Rampage is a better game than this.
Now, I love the stylization here; it captures that edgy adultswim irreverent dark comedy tone very well, but the gameplay itself feels unpolished and unbalanced. I couldn't even get to a single Bad Dragon gag as I kept getting railed by boss fights. Maybe a skill issue, but the controls felt stiff and awkward, and the enemies felt cheap in that bullshitty oldschool NES way. Rampage wasn't really like that. Rampage was pretty empowering for quite a while. It was mostly just a silly game where you wreak havoc as a big monster.
Then there's the artistry itself. Now, it just doesn't do enough to set itself apart as a Rampage clone. It feels like they did the bare minimum in adding cutscenes which paled in comparison to the animations that made them big at the time, and the references to the show and to pop culture were pretty stale and limited; I at least wished to see dozens, if not hundreds of gags and parodies rather than the same few over and over and over again. In 2017 we had the technology to make that work.
Then there's the property itself. It just didn't age that well. I'm sorry, but as an adult the show doesn't hit like it used to. I love that episode with the gay horny German cat businessmen, but that's about it. Even still, I do love Fatigue as a character, but his dynamic with Sheen is muted in this game. I would have expected more of the characterizations and the dynamics to be retained, but it is leveled off to just be an homage to Rampage rather than its own thing.
