Rambo The Video Game (PlayStation 3)

The reviews on this site are the text versions of the videos on my YouTube channel. The text based reviews use (if at all) very little pictures. Please follow the link to the corresponding video in order to see in game graphics.

Rambo The Video Game was made by Teyon in 2014 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. In this video I am going to show the PlayStation 3 version as it supports PlayStation Move. Sadly the PC version isn't light gun compatible, as it uses relative instead of absolute mouse positions. The game looks similar to the 2008 arcade game Rambo which was made by Sega, but it plays very different and shouldn't be confused with it.

The game starts of at the staged funeral of John Rambo, retelling the events of his time in Vietnam and the events of the first two movies. It is then revealed that John Rambo is still alive and that his dead was mocked to allow him a new life in Thailand. The story then flows into the plot of the third movie.

The game consists of a story mode in which new levels are unlocked and a mode which allows the player to freely choose amongst levels. Multiple degrees of difficulty are selectable in each mode. The difficulty can be tamed down at the continue screen if necessary. A rich variety of weapons are available. New weapons can be unlocked by absolving special challenges, which are displayed in a dedicated menu. Reloading the weapon is tied to an important in game mechanic. A colored wheel is displayed. If the player presses the reload button at the right moment a second time, the magazine capacity will be increased for one time and the process of reloading is faster. Similarly if the player presses the button again at the wrong moment reloading takes very long and fewer than usual cartridges are in the magazine. On many occasions Rambo may take cover. Often Rambo will remain attackable to some enemies even while he is covered. Therefore one strategy is to go into cover and to kill these non blocked enemies first, before quickly peaking from cover while shooting the remaining targets. A central element of the game is quick time events. While there are whole levels solely consisting of quick time events, a few quick time events are also thrown into the shooting segments. These go from supplying an ally with ammunition, avoid getting hurt by a hazard to outright avoid getting killed.

At the end of each level the player is rated and earns experience points. The player may use gained points to enhance certain abilities and may fill up to three slots with augmentations. Shooting enemies will fill up so called rage bars, which allow the player to enter rage mode upon pressing a dedicated button. In rage mode time passes slower, and certain augmentations trigger their effect. Many objects are destroyable and rag doll physics apply to the enemies. The game contains gory segments and allows the player to shoot enemies into pieces.

The game consists of a total of 16 levels. Each movie of the original trilogy is represented: First Blood, First Blood part II and Rambo III. Furthermore the first level takes place before the movies. An additional pack of three levels called “Baker Team” can be downloaded from the PlayStation Network for free.

In my opinion the quick time events are a stupid idea. I think it breaks the flow of the game. Assuming the player hasn't played a whole lot of PlayStation Move games before, or is using an unfamiliar controller for the sake of enhancing game play it is a bit ambitious to a expect the player to press buttons at precisely the right moment, within split seconds to react while just providing a limited number of continues.

The game doesn't run very stable and crashes sometimes. The cut scenes are played back during loading in order to mask this process. However it seems too few resources remain available to show these videos fluently as usually the playback is plagued by lags. The on screen reticle and the first person like weapon can be hidden, in order to make the game look more arcade like. Omitting the cross hair is a terrible idea in a gyro game though, as the zero position of the calibration and the directional sensitivity will change constantly. Paired with the lack of arcadey bullet impact indication it is terribly difficult to know where the player is shooting at. The graphical appeal of the game is very strange, as Teyon mixes realistic high resolution textures with very poor polygonal work. Faces appear very flat and static. Especially hair looks very unnatural. The music is good and Teyon was able to license audio samples from the actual movies. Teyon is famous for a series of flawed on rails shooter games called Heavy Fire. Sadly it seems Teyon never took the feedback of the community seriously and went on repeating their questionable designs. I find this frustrating as I can see a big potential in Teyon's games. Never the less the Teyon games are a good excuse to own a PlayStation Sharp Shooter controller. Much fun can be had, if the player is aware of the flaws and doesn't expect to play a good game. Personally I had a great time with Rambo The Video Game and I am very glad to own it.

I don't like the cover and I think it is very silly to plaster multiple instances of Stallone's face all over it.