Rush Rover Review

I think it’s fair to say that Ratalaika have a certain reputation when it comes to their releases – quick, easy action, accompanied by quick, easy achievements. While the latter is certainly true of Rush Rover, the gameplay is a fair bit harder than we’re used to from them – and really rather fun to boot.

I’ve been a bit hit and miss on roguelikes over the years; sometimes I can get behind them despite my distaste for the whole ‘die and restart’ mechanic. Others, I really can’t, no matter how hard I try. Rush Rover sits somewhere in the middle, both being a quick and fun affair that I didn’t initially mind restarting, though after a few runs that niggling frustration did begin to show.

As is the way, we start off with a bare bones form of attack, here a limp machine gun and a drone than fires out at a very slow pace. Dropping enemies grants us currency to upgrade our equipment, and occasionally even entirely new bits to replace them with. Each room locks us in until the enemies within have been killed, upon which a couple of possible routes to the boss unlock. Depending on the will of the RNG, we can either end up with some seriously kick ass kit – or shit all.

Luckily, Rush Rover seems to be a bit more generous than some. Rarely did I get too far without some fun new weapon to try out. The currency feels as though it is abundant, but in reality it seems to take an age to accrue, though the effects of upgrading even one level on a weapon are pretty obvious. My favourite so far was the spinning blades, where they fly out and hover in place, dealing massive damage to anyone in the way.

We also get new weapons for our drone, as well as special attacks that can be found in chests – add those spinning blades to a barrage of rockets and the enemies in our way are going to have a bad time. Each of these can be upgraded, as well as our health and speed. A dodge rounds out the abilities, and even this can be upgraded to help out – how about leaving a trail or flames in our wake as we skip out of harms way? Of course, dying sees any and all upgrades and weapons gone, but it’s not long before we can get something new to play with.

These weapon and abilities make the repetitive gameplay far more bearable – enter a room, kill anything that fires back, move on, rinse and repeat. Even some of the harder rooms are cleared fairly quickly, and powering up makes this go by even faster. Terminals dotted around let us purchase items and upgrades, and there are a plethora of boxes to smash in the hopes of finding something to help along the way.

It’s all wrapped up in a fairly standard looking pixel art aesthetic that, while nothing outstanding, at least keeps the action pretty easy to read. There are bullet hell elements too, with some enemies filling the screen with bullets for us to dodge while also moving around the stages. Some of the smaller projectiles can get lost under the bigger effects, a few sneaky attacks that come in unseen,  but for the most part anything dangerous is bright, large and generally numbers in the dozens at a time so it’s not too hard to see what to avoid. Bonuses are awarded for clearing stages quickly and without taking damage too, so best get those reactions in check!

A side mode actually challenges us to do exactly that, wave after wave of bullet hell madness is fired at us, requiring us to not get hit for as long as possible. It’s a hard, but welcome, addition that mixes up the gameplay form the main mode. The campaign can also be played in co-op, adding further value – and challenge.

Conclusion

Rush Rover manages to hit that sweet spot in roguelikes of being a good challenge, but also not feeling like it’s wasting the players time every time they have to restart. Some generic visuals and awful music aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had with it – and a few extra easy cheevos never goes amiss eh?

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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