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Platform: PlayStation 2, GameCube

Genre: Action
Number of Players: 1 - 2

Modern games have led to some rather interesting, and equally bland recreations of some of histories most memorable games. The past years have seen horrible modernizations of old familiar games like Defender and Asteroids, but every so often there is a game that a facelift does justice for. Rampage was one of arcade history’s infamous quarter munchers, though not nearly to the extent that Pac-Man was (and still is.) There was just a special magic about playing as larger than life monstrosities, destroying cities, and crushing the military, especially when you had some friends to help out.

Rampage: Total Destruction is the return of George, Lizzie and Ralph (or the ape, the lizard, and the werewolf) to the modern age, but there have been a number of changes to this game. Scrum Labs has been testing its latest product, Scrum Soda, and the results haven’t been good. Of the 30 participants used, all of them have undergone horrific mutations as a result, but the boys in the lab have come up with an ingenious plan. They have put the monsters in cryogenic tube and frozen them in hidden locations. As long as no one finds them, everything is going to be fine.

Everything however . . .. is not . . . . fine.

I think that all of us old school gamers (and some new school gamers who have played the Midway Treasures) remember the objective of the game, but just in case, let’s have a little refresher course. The goal: destroy everything. That should have been obvious, the game is Total Destruction. Before you can bring the cities of Earth down to their very foundations however, you’ll need to select a monster.

Anyone who ever played Rampage remembers that you had three different monsters to select from, but Total Destruction is an old game for anew era, and three is such a miniscule number. You want monsters? You will find that this Rampage offers you not three, not five, but thirty different terrors to choose from. The selection screen will allow you to see the power of each of these behemoths, but not every one of them will be available at first, but more on that later.

Total Destruction offers a number of different types of play. Campaign mode will let you turn loose the monster of your choosing in a number of cities across the globe. You will need to punch, kick, jump, and smash your way to the next phase of concert jungle destruction, but now there is little more than just mayhem going on. The beginning of each stage will give you objectives to achieve such as finding a certain number of the same icons or eating various things (people usually.) Meeting these will give you points and in some cases, reward you with a monster upgrade. Each of the thirty titans has unlockable mutli-spins, jump smashes, roar attacks, and charge punches. Oh, but your fun filled day of obliteration isn’t going to be as easy as you might think.

For some reason, the people of Earth just aren’t happy about their cities being smashed to pieces, and the military and local police have been called in to put a stop to your carnage. The puny humans can easily be eradicated, but you may take some damage in the meantime. That is easily cured though by eating food that you find in smashed buildings, and people make a great meal as well (and help earn points.) There are hazards to be wary of as well, and even though you might be huge, things like electricity and fire still can hurt you. You also have a Rampage Meter and once this fills up, you will be able to smash cities twice as fast, something that ranks rather high since you are on a time limit in each stage.

Each of the cities also has a boss that you’ll need to contend with at the end the rounds. Scrum Labs will send out some pathetic contraption that is a nuisance and needs to be pulverized. Once that’s out of the way, its business as usual, and that business is turning buildings into rubble. One other thing you should be looking for are cryo-tubes with monsters. Finding these will unlock other monsters to play as during the game, and these are going to be very helpful since Total Destruction allows you to change monsters between stages instead of simply being stuck with the same creature from start to finish.

The Campaign Mode for Rampage will allow two players to work together on destroying cities, but there are other ways to take down the world. King of the City will let a single player go up against the computer, or two-players can face off and see who can get the highest score. King of the World on the other hand is similar, but this mode will consist of multiple stages making for lengthier gamplay. You can also participate in a timed run to see if you can smash everything before time is up. Also, Midway has included the original Rampage as well as Rampage World Tour in the bonus content section without even needing an unlock code.

The Rampage of old was simply a two-dimensional game, but now it has gone 3D, at least to some degree. Although you won’t have total control (no ability to rotate the screen however you’d like) the stages aren’t just flat images. You can throw cars into the foreground, the buildings have depth to them, and Total Destruction does have a look that is not unlike the other games in the series, but with much better graphics overall. Best of these has to be the monsters, and aside from the classics, you find bats, rams, lions, beasts with slithering tentacles, and just about any other monster that you could think of, all larger than life and ready to crush and devour. Smashing the cities also is a stupendous event and watching the smoke and rubble rise while a building falls is more than enough to make anyone feel a little giddy.

The only thing that Rampage really could have benefited from is an online mode to allow fans across the world to compete against each other or even work in teams to destroy monsters. Actually, a create-a-monster mode might not have been a bad addition either, but I don’t think this is going to be the last that we see of these monsters on the loose. Even without things like this however, Rampage: Total Destruction is old school gameplay in pretty new packaging that actually is better than the originals in just about every way. Go ahead, let that inner beast loose.

-mike-