A quick thrill-ride for the nostalgics

User Rating: 7.1 | Expendable PC
By grantcorp | Review Date:
If you are nostalgic for a classic coin-op shooter, Rage's beautiful Expendable might be of interest to you. Being in essence a classic top-down scroller it features some gimmicks like a 3D environment that rotates into new directions from time to time, but you are just as bound to the ground as in any vintage 2D scroller. In fact I keep getting flashbacks of Ikari Warriors. Typical for a Rage-game, there are plenty of beautiful in-game cinematics that affect the gaming world regularly, often deforming the game area and putting obstacles in your path.

As its coin op heritage suggests, a second player can join the madness on the screen at any given time. Playing double on a map littered with power-ups and scrolling in all directions leads to a rather chaotic game which requires dedicated teamwork and coordination, otherwise both players tend to end up in opposite corners struggling to push the gameworld in their direction.

The area where I think this game could do with an improvement is in the targeting department, especially when you are playing with a keyboard. Since this is pure 360 action with enemies zooming in from multiple directions it is hard to find the time to line up your gun completely straight towards each and every enemy, often leading to a serious waste of precious high power ammunition. Games like Future Cop solved this elegantly by always auto-targeting the enemy facing your forward weapons, even when the enemy moved off the screen.

Nevertheless, Expendable is fun for a while, even though the lack of an option for auto-targeting means you have to be a hardcore player if you expect to see this game through to the end.
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