Green Rage Review
PROS
- Wonderful hand-drawn presentation; like a children's novel brought to life.
- Cute storyline.
CONS
- Poorly considered controls; gameplay used to disguise poor design decisions.
VERDICT
Green Rage is has the potential to be a beautiful, if short experience, but is otherwise smothered by a control system that pairs poorly with the game as designed.
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Green Rage by Paralline exists in that horrible stasis of gaming where poor gameplay mixes with brilliant presentation. All you're tasked with is to guide an alien, beset at all sides by dangers as he searches for his lost companions, but these challenges will prove overwhelming time and time again.
This is thanks, in no small part, to the controls feeling entirely insufficient for the task at hand. A virtual stick allows you to move (very slowly) throughout the stage, while three buttons provide you with access to the basic actions of jumping, firing your weapon, and placing down a portable checkpoint. This last button acts as a kind of warning for what's to come.
As you progress through the stage enemies will spawn, giving you a brief instant to start firing and aim in their direction. Unfortunately for the alien in your charge you can only aim in 7 cardinal directions (down is sadly not available), with enemies taking damage if they happen to line up or you constantly wave the gun back and forth between two directions. The number of enemies sent often proves to be too much for the tiny pea-shooter to handle, resulting in the tiny amount of health the alien has being chewed through very quickly.
And now you know why you have a portable checkpoint - collect enough orbs and you can activate it to restart further away from the start of the stage.
Should you persist you'll be rewarded with an incredibly charming cartoon explaining why you're there and what has happened to the other aliens sent to the planet, but the grueling path to that final scene is a hard one to recommend.
Screenshots
$0.99
