Unfortunately none of the Arrested Development cast did a chicken dance during this game.
There are some games that make me sad to play. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is one of them. I can tell that the developers had fun making it; there’s a lot of polish here and it has a nice style to it. There’s even a good game in here somewhere, but it’s hidden behind some baffling design choices that bring the overall experience down.
CONTROLS (4/5)
Rocketbirds actually controls quite well and is very polished. The controls are responsive with moving, jumping and shooting all feeling very solid. Configurations are also customizable, which is always a plus for me. My only real complaint was throwing a gadget required using the Vita’s rear touch pad to control its arc. There was no way to use the d-pad or analog stick for this, and using the back pad felt awkward and always took me out of the experience.
GRAPHICS/SOUND (3.25/5)
If it were not for one huge flaw, the game would actually look excellent. The character models look great. Backgrounds, great. Animations, you guessed it, great. Yet all of these items are victimized by another stupid use of the Vita’s gimmicks. Tilting the system tilts the perspective very slightly, which changes the viewpoint.
Holding it still created no problems, but if I moved my arms a little, the game screen would shake around which would always be distracting and frankly a bit disorienting. The shift was not enough to have any use from a gameplay perspective even if the developers bothered implementing one. Instead it was the bad combination of being not enough to be useful while still being annoying as hell. Both the music and sound effects got the job done but little more.
GAMEPLAY (1.75/5)
Rocketbirds’ gameplay approach takes a gamble by blending action and stealth into 2D side scrolling segments; unfortunately, this mix doesn’t pay off. Even before Mark of the Ninja perfected 2D stealth, Rocketbirds’ attempts at the idea would have come off as clumsy. These basically boil down to segments where you either make a jump to get out of an enemy’s path or use a power that lets you control enemies. The problem is the game never let me decide for myself which option was the right one; it was always incredibly obvious when I was supposed to shoot and when I was supposed to sneak with no real opportunity to experiment.
Now, I’m normally fine with mindless action, but because Rocketbirds has to compensate for having stealthy features, the action ends up suffering. Gunning down enemies is simply not all that satisfying as it requires unloading too many bullets and causes them to float in a way that just feels awkward. Not to mention that simultaneously having an enemy on either side of you is basically the game’s way of saying you’re screwed.
In addition, platforming is held back by what is possibly the worst design choice for any 2D platformer: the platforms are shown at an angle. Rather than having a clear spot where the platform’s color begins, there is a small color change between the gaps and the real end of the ledge. This means rather than seeing a nice, clear cut ledge, there is a very vague area to grab that I found myself frequently forgetting about in the heat of action.
OVERALL (2.25/5)
I’m sure there’s some alternate timeline where The Simpsons are still funny, the Angels have won the World Series for the last five years and Rocketbirds is a good game. It has some interesting ideas and plenty of polish to go along with it. Unfortunately, sloppy execution and unnecessary use of the Vita’s features kept it from being halfway decent. On a system with countless downloadable side scrollers, it would be hard to recommend this one.
RotoRob GAMING 