Plenty of retro-themed games have been written as love letters to 8-bit gaming. VBlank’s Retro City Rampage is a love letter with dick pics and a gift certificate to GameStop. It’s for PS3, PS Vita, and PC, but for once I can recommend the PS3/Vita for playability reasons: this game’s crossplay-capable, and if you buy it for one Sony system, you have it for the other.
On the surface, Retro City Rampage looks like a de-make of Grand Theft Auto, but it manages to tap into much more than that thanks to its uniquely retro look. You play Player, who’s sent to the future by a Doc Brown analog who mistakes you for Bill and Ted analogs who crashed their phone booth into his car, and you must then rebuild the car by fighting a Dr. Robotnik analog, doing chores for a human Game Genie, and wreaking havoc across the city. If you’re a Gen-Y, this game is like your childhood forced through a (more…)