Raging Bytes is set in the 1970s, and following a brief prologue scene the game begins with the main character – police officer Ben – waking up following an accident and finding himself in a deserted hospital. After a brief wander around, it becomes clear from the general carnage, bloodstains, lack of people and the looming presence of zombies that quite a lot has changed whilst he has been out of action.
The game has a pretty direct and pacey narrative, and whilst it isn’t going to win any prizes for originality, it had enough fun moments and brevity in the dialogue sequences to keep me engaged, and I found myself really enjoying finding out what was going to befall my little troupe of characters around the next corner.
The general pace of the game is quite swift, so you don’t find yourself wandering around bored through the same corridors over and over. As a rule – you spend less than an hour in each location, then that section of the story wraps up and it's off to the next place!
Of course, it’s not all hanging around and chatting to your fellow road-trippers, there’s a lot of combat going on, and it’s enjoyably accessible stuff. The way in which the combat works in Raging Bytes is – as you wander around the present location, searching for items such as ammo and health, zombies will be drawn to you as you walk near them, and an exclamation mark then appears above their heads and they move towards you magnetically, at differing paces – and some of these deadheads can really shift!
Should they make contact with you, you won’t just be fighting that particular zombie – but will be drawn into combat with all currently alerted zombies, which can get pretty tasty if there are five or six pottering around.
You may think that a way around this would be to approach each zombie and take them out one at a time, but that really does eat into your already scarce ammo supply, so you must balance your choices out, fight or flee?
When in combat, the game moves to a third-person affair. Your characters appear at the bottom of the screen and the zombies are above, either moving towards you or attacking you from a range.
There is a selection of guns and ranged weapons that are collectable, but the ammo really does need to be managed, and the danger of allowing the zombies to get too close is that using melee weapons costs health – unless you strike a killing blow - and the weapon knockback may mean that the zombie doesn’t get bonked far back enough and will continue its assault.
It’s very straightforward and backed up with suitably zippy chiptune music – I was also pleased with the fact that the music in the game alters as you progress, so the battle themes aren’t as grating as they have been in other games of the genre, good.
SUMMARY
With a classic top-down, 16-bit heart; a sense of humour; accessible combat; a cheesy story, and light inventory management, I found myself really enjoying Raging Bytes.
It adds very little in terms of redefining the genre formula, but it doesn’t need to. And the focus on narrative and progress, as opposed to tedious grinding and watching numbers go up slowly is a welcome shift that feels enticing.
I’m already hoping for a Raging Bytes 2!
Raging Bytes is available on:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Like what you see in the Games Freezer?
Why not tell us what you think with a few well-chosen comments? :)
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.