No offence to Ratyboy, but when he was in our front room, we’d have reached for the baseball bat. A couple of inches excessive, standing on his hind legs and with a stoned look on his face, he’s one creepy trying rodent. It could have been a reflex-swing.
Ratyboy Adventures isn’t fairly as darkish as all that. It’s a 3D platformer the place the degrees are single rooms in a home. Suppose Mario 64, however swapping the Mushroom Kingdom for an orderly kitchen and also you’re just about there. Ratyboy lives in these rooms (thus the baseball bat), rising from a mousehole in one of many corners.
He’s clearly a hungry boy, as his process is to search out all of the cheese within the room and eat it. The homeowners of the home have been successfully inviting him in, as there’s cheese flipping all over the place. It reminded us of Boris’s quote about no one getting work finished, on account of all of the cheese.
Being no taller than a DVD case, getting across the room is simpler mentioned than finished. Sofas, worktops, cupboards and extra are out of attain, however there’s clearly cheese on high. Ratyboy has to amble up small platforms first – the legs of workplace chairs, packing containers – and use them as a leg-up to medium-sized platforms, earlier than lastly reaching the topmost elements of the room. With the cheese collected, Ratyboy can dive off the highest of the bookcase and head for the mousehole, the place an exit portal seems.
Ratyboy has a Lara Croft ledge seize to make issues a contact simpler. Miss a platform by millimetres and Ratyboy will cling on and hoick himself up. However that’s the restrict of his capabilities: he can bounce, seize and do nothing else.
There are dozens of ranges right here, each a distinct home surroundings. There’s some barely fancier choices – a panic room and a gymnasium, for instance, which most homes dwell with out – however in any other case the degrees are kitchens, bogs, eating rooms and extra. Which finally ends up being barely limiting, if we’re being trustworthy. There’s a familiarity to every room, as tables seem in about half of them, sofas in one other half, and we obtained used to the identical fashions again and again. In the event that they have been extra outlandish (the equally themed Catlateral Harm took us to a witch’s home and the Moon, for instance), then it could have spruced proceedings up properly.
Not that they might have regarded nice. The graphics in Ratyboy Adventures are at greatest plain, at worst the place the place polygons go to die. The environments have zero allure, when allure was a baseline expectation for its forebears on the PS2, Gamecube and Dreamcast. You’ll have thought that, with a home as a backdrop, the devs may have leaned into the element. Think about the humorous stuff they might cram into cabinets, slap on baked bean labels, or stick on the quilt of books? If IKEA can do it, certainly Ratyboy can. However no, it’s detail-less, a romp via the blandest of bland homes.
Issues don’t get a lot better from there. The place most 3D platformers fail is the digital camera. We surprise if Ratyboy Adventures even tried to succeed. Climb onto the shelf of a bookcase, and the digital camera jackknifes round, as if it wished to get out of there quicksmart. It’s completely attainable to lose sight of Ratyboy fully. The digital camera turns into an issue exactly when the platforming is at its hardest and least forgiving, which is – as you might in all probability guess – unhelpful.
However nothing can eclipse the gameplay. Not since Bubsy 3D have I been so indignant on the character I’m controlling. Can a personality be the hero and the enemy on the similar time? As a result of it certain as hell appears like Ratyboy is actively sabotaging me.
The ledge seize does regardless of the hell it desires. Generally it should seize a floor, different instances it merely gained’t hassle. There’s clearly one thing within the code that determines one door knob is climbable whereas one other isn’t, but it surely’s not one thing you might inform from appearances. We fell from a tall platform after lacking a seize, questioning whether or not we missed as a result of we have been crap, or as a result of the ledge wasn’t grabbable in any respect. Generally it was as a result of we have been crap.
There are the flimsiest of paths to the cheese. Tiny platforms, skinny bridges, jumps the place you must double-back on your self (grabbing a shelf from the shelf beneath): they’re all right here, in sequence. We’d wonder if there was a neater route, one thing that didn’t contain balancing on the highest of an open door, for instance. However in nearly each occasion this was the best way Ratyboy wished us to go.
If Ratyboy’s controls have been exact and buffed to a shine, then this might be effective, after all. However they’re not. The problems are myriad. Ratyboy stops nonetheless if he tries to stroll on a platform that could be a hair’s breadth larger than the one he’s on. The bounce is a big, wayward arc, when typically you simply need one thing small and managed. And the sensitivity is manner off. Stroll in remotely the mistaken path on a tightrope and he’ll run and bounce like a lemming. Expensive god, I wished to throw myself off after him.
Some leeway, a bit little bit of generosity, would have softened the issue. However nu-uh, Ratyboy desires you to gather each final cheeses in a degree, and there are thirty or forty of them. Which signifies that no cheese will get left behind: you must seize each final one, and meaning going each flipping the place. Should you can’t discover the final one, nicely sorry matey, you must preserve trying. Should you can’t be arsed going again to get one that you simply missed, then you definately higher get arsed.
If there was one factor we felt taking part in via Ratyboy Adventures, it was ache. It was a pointy jolt each time we tried to seize a ledge however couldn’t. It was ache after we slowly, fastidiously walked Ratyboy throughout a tightrope, just for the digital camera and controls to gangtackle us to the ground.
Ratyboy Adventures would possibly look vaguely like Mario 64, but it surely’s a distraction. Simply as we picked up the pad with the intention of taking part in, Ratyboy got here from behind and bit us arduous on the butt. It’s presumably probably the most painful 3D platformer we’ve performed. Curse you, Ratyboy.
