Mad
Rat Dead by developer Nippon
Ichi Software and publisher NIS
America Inc.—Sony
PlayStation 4 review written by Richard
with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Some people have rhythm and some don't, but the real question is do
rats have rhythm? Well, NIS is gonna let us find out whether rats can
throw down some sick beats, or if they flop like video
game-turned-movies.
Mad Rat Dead is a weird combination of rhythm and platformer that
hurt my brain a little the first time I saw a gameplay trailer for
it. The titular character, Mad Rat, is a lab rat that was
experimented on and died. But in comes the Rat God to turn back time
to allow the Mad Rat one last day to see his wish come true. So off
goes the Mad Rat, with his talking heart, and his ability to turn
back time, in order to make his wish come true.
Now, this wouldn't be a rhythm game without moving to a beat, and
that's exactly what you need to do. Your "heart" produces a
song and you move along to the beat of the song. You can dash, jump,
drop when in the air, or charge for an enhanced jump or dash. Timing
your button inputs with the tempo scrolling across the bottom of the
screen is needed to move your rat friend through the increasingly
perilous stages. But be careful, because you only have a limited
amount of "beats" to finish the stage by. Oh, and you can
also turn back time when you die, which will happen a lot, but only a
few moves, and you also "lose" the beats that have passed.
Now, I'd like to bring up a key mechanic, and the only thing that
legitimately frustrated me while playing: jump attacking enemies.
Basically there are there trippy flower things that, when close
enough to, will get a targeting reticle. If you jump a few times near
them, you'll probably attack them. Note I said probably. I only got
it to work about 50% of the time at first, before I realized you
USUALLY need your second jump to attack them. I say usually, because
sometimes that isn't the case. By the end of the game, I managed to
improve my jump attack success rate to 75%, but it could still be
infuriating.
So let's talk a bit about the tunes. Most of them are variations on
the main theme song, which is a little unfortunate as a listener, but
is nice as a player, considering you'll be used to the songs so you
should be able to pick up the tempo a bit better. Now, you don't just
move to the tempo though, you move to the beat. Which can and will
change, especially in later stages. And some stages move so fast it
can be a little harrowing. On the plus side, not performing any of
the main actions (jump, dash, charge, or drop) doesn't impact your
beat combo, meaning you could basically just slowly move left or
right without "missing" a beat despite not pushing
anything. Rather lenient, but greatly appreciated. The tunes are
catchy as well, and I haven't been able to get the last boss theme
out of my head for quite a while now. Yes, there are bosses, no, they
aren't easy. The last boss was the first time I almost failed a stage
though, as I only had 28 beats left, and you start with a lot. Like,
over 500.
While the story might be a little cliché, I honestly had a lot of
fun with Mad Rat Dead, and considering I'm generally pretty awful at
rhythm games, that's saying something. No really, despite playing
five instruments and having built two guitars, rhythm games are like
one of the banes of my existence. Mad Rat Dead however does a very
good job of matching the beat you need to follow to the actual beat
of the song, meaning you can go in time with the song and be alright,
which is good for me. Stages tend to be just long enough that you
start wondering how close to the end you are right at the end, and
very few times to I get frustrated enough that I had to take a break.
At least after I figured out how jump attacking enemies worked.
Now, I'll be perfectly honest, the story can get a little (very)
cliché, some stages are exercises in patience and reaction speed,
and if I had a dollar for every time I got "stuck" on an
"enemy-to-dash-to-enemy" or "enemy-to-dash" to
dodge something, I could probably buy a small collection of antique
china. Bosses can be real tough, and sometimes the small gaps in beat
or tempo changes threw me way too hard. Also, missing a beat "kills"
that beat, so you have to wait to hit the next beat, something that
took me a while to get used to. But you know what? I absolutely loved
the game. It was just cheesy enough to have a traditional basis,
while still throwing enough twists to not make me swear off dairy,
and the jump attacking issue can be solved with thought out placement
if you aren't overly concerned with simply speeding through a stage,
despite the nature of the jump attack being spotty at times.
The bosses though, they are rough, they're tough, and I loved all but
the first one. I really felt the game truly shone in these scenarios,
as they're pretty much all pattern learning with their own unique
scenarios, and it was really brilliant. And the "missing beats"?
It certainly keeps you on your toes, but is either evident when it's
going to happen, or happens so rarely it shouldn't be a big issue if
it trips you up too bad.
Overall, Mad Rat Dead is the probably the best, as well as only,
"Rhythm Platformer" that I'm aware of. It has a kickin'
sound track, the gameplay is smooth, the graphics are clean and
crisp, and the storyline is strangely endearing. Yeah, Mad Rat Dead
may be one of the single weirdest genre mashups I've seen since I
played a freeware puzzle/fighting game (that one didn't go over so
well), but hey, apparently NIS know was they're doing, cuz this weird
genre chimera turned out not discordant, but rocking in style. If
you're in the groove for a rhythm game, or just are interested in
jamming with a new platformer style, Mad Rat Dead certainly can't be
beat.
Score: 8.5 / 10
