Rampage World Tour Wholesale destruction? Screaming victims being eaten alive? Big hairy hands? Sounds like Rampage World Tour was simply tailor-made for our very own Charlie Brooker. I'M A CREEP, I'M A WIERDO It’s 1985, and you’re a sexually frustrated teenage boy. An unpleasant rind of lank, greasy hair droops across your forehead like a wet velvet glove. An intricate constellation of tiny pus-capped pimples peppers your sallow cheeks. Hormones rule your life: you’re in love with an impossibly beautiful girl called Melanie from form 5B, but she’s been shagging a twenty-three year old bank clerk for six months and therefore your very existence doesn’t even register on her emotional radar. Your best friend keeps bragging about the number of sexual encounters he’s had, while you bite your tongue and wonder whether you’ll ever get past “base two” with anyone -- after all, even the ugliest girl in town, who once blew off a horse in exchange for three cigarettes, seems to hate your guts. Home life isn’t any rosier. Your parents just don’t understand: when they’re not bickering with each other they’re always on at you to tidy your bedroom. And it’s the middle of the summer holidays, and you’re bored, and lonely, and it’s raining. On any other day you might sit indoors and write a swathe of sulky, self-pitying poetry... but not today. Today you’re going to release that tension by bashing away furiously... within the confines of a computer game. You see, the funfair’s in town. They’ve brought a video arcade with them. And you know that somewhere in that arcade lurks a Midway Rampage cabinet. What better way to vent all that pent-up adolescent frustration than by taking control of a giant ape and smashing the crap out of an entire city, shattering buildings with your fists and swallowing people alive? There is no alternative. You climb on your bike and cycle through the driving rain, a pocketful of ten pence pieces jangling against your thigh as you go. Midsummer thunder rumbles in the distance. Payback time is coming. SMASH, KILL, BURN, DESTROY That was then, this is now. And sexually-thwarted 14-year-olds need cycle through the rain no more: not now that we’ve got Rampage World Tour to play in the comfort of our own living rooms. The concept is largely unchanged since those heady days of yesteryear: you (and an optional couple of friends) assume command of a gigantic B-Movie monster, and then proceed to destroy absolutely everything you can see. What this boils down to is clambering up and down the sides of buildings, smashing windows and concrete with your fists and feet. Or getting onto the roof and leaping up and down like a hyperactive toddler at a trampoline convention. Either way, once enough damage has been wreaked, the building will begin to crumble and collapse entirely, at which point you can move on to the next one. It’s vandalism writ large. Very large. Of course, the authorities aren’t going to simply stand by and watch you go about your business. You’ll find yourself under assault from wave upon wave of helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, policemen, and even flamethrower-toting jetpack troops, all of them ferociously intent on stopping you in your tracks. Depleted energy can be replenished by chowing down on snacks, such as burgers, carrots and people, naturally. If you and your mate(s) get bored, you can liven things up considerably by knocking ten bells out of one another for a laugh. That’s Rampage as it ever was, and Rampage World Tour doesn’t introduce any fundamental changes. Instead of a single screen, we’re now treated to scrolling wrap-around levels (woo-hoo), and the occasional twixt-stage subgame and cutscene (let joy be unconfined). In fact the main difference is alluded to fairly heavily in the title: there are more levels, ostensibly resembling many different locations around the world (although with the exception of some dandy outer-space levels they all look virtually identical). Despite the addition of vastly improved graphics, the entire package is hardly cutting-edge. The gameplay is still resolutely two-dimensional, the main characters are represented by Donkey Kong Countrystyle pre-rendered sprites, the sound effects are basic and the music passable at best. Indeed, in many respects, Rampage World Tour resembles a Super Nintendo release. While decidedly superior to the recent Playstation version of the same game, it’s not going to impress your friends unless, of course, they’ve been in cryogenic storage for the last thirteen years. BASHING AWAY FURIOUSLY Still, the game isn’t holding out any pretensions: Rampage World Tour is first and foremost an exercise in mindless, cathartic destruction. It’s so simple, any drooling, babbling imbecile could pick it up and work out the basics within seconds and thanks to the unlimited continues, they could go on to complete it in a single sitting if they chose to do so. Ultimately you’re best off giving it a miss unless you’ve got an overriding nostalgic hankering for the original game, or you’re rubbish, or you need a game you can play simultaneously with your two three-year-old nephews. SCORE - 51% Relive those happy adolescent memories.

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