Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

INTRO:

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is not exactly an original game. It is the expansion of a Flash-based game created by four persons, based on a silly idea of antagonistic anthropomorphic birds cooked up by one of them in the turn of the previous millennium. Hardboiled Chicken has gone on to become a commercial product of its own.

It is technically a step above a Flash game, so Hardboiled Chicken is not exactly a terrifically sophisticated game. In fact, its main appeal lies in its stylish presentation, which will be elaborated on later.

NOTE: This review was done without first-hand experience in local co-op. The reason/excuse is given later.

PREMISE:

As mentioned earlier, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is based on a Flash short film made by one of the members of Ratloop, the developer of the game.

In that short film, there is a war between anthropomorphic chickens and penguins. In the Flash game Rocketbirds: Revolution, which precedes Hardboiled Chicken, there is not much of a war left. The penguins, who appear to be a parody of Soviet USSR, appear to have won the war against the chickens and other poultry, all of whom appear to be based on Americans of typical ethnicities.

The penguins had been occupying the poultry’s homeland for a long while, but a rebellion is brewing and one of the revolution’s champions is none other than the titular character, Hardboiled Chicken.

HARDBOILED CHICKEN:

That the protagonist is a bad-ass would be obvious from the intro alone. His character is the one who is responsible for most of the stylish presentation.

He is apparently trained for combat, and also has the nerve to pull dare-devil stunts involving jetpacks. Speaking of which, the player will be engaging in some jetpack-based combat, but that is for later.

Hardboiled does have a story to tell, specifically how he obtained his great skill in the first place. This is perhaps the only piece of character development for Hardboiled though, because without it, he appears to be little than yet another bad-ass.

The blander side of his character is made all the more apparent by his dull voice-acting, which sounds little more than a man forcing a deep baritone but without the necessary inflections for a more emotional delivery.

MOVEMENT TUTORIALS:

Moving the player character is the first lesson which the player learns, of course.

However, Hardboiled Chicken (that is, the game) differs from its predecessor (the Flash game Revolution) in the way that it goes about giving this lesson.

Revolution resorted to flashes of on-screen text which tells the player what to do. This was hardly subtle and was already a typical and thus boring method of delivering tutorials.

Hardboiled Chicken does not resort to this. Instead, its very first scene shows nothing more than Hardboiled in a forest, with a bunch of crates ahead. The player will have to figure what the movement keys are.

Such a hands-off beginning to the game has been done before in other games. However, it has been effective in other games because the player can still access the list of control inputs during actual gameplay. Hardboiled Chicken has no such convenience. Instead, the player must exit to the main menu to access said list.

Of course, one could argue that veteran game consumers would quickly figure out that the controls for movement are the usual “WSAD” keys. Having learned this, the player would realize that Hardboiled automatically vaults over crates which are not stacked too high.

Yet, it can also be argued that if Ratloop had intended to target more experienced players, it is not being kind to completely inexperienced ones.

Fortunately, the game has more overt tutorials for the lessons on the less rudimentary parts of the gameplay.

OTHER TUTORIALS:

Soon after the tutorial on movement, the game displays on-screen prompts to suggest to the player what a control input does. An example is shown below.

These brief tutorials, which make use of believably-placed obstacles, would quickly impart on the player the importance of shooting, jumping and such other staples of 2D action-platformers.

(As a tip, jumping over low obstacles is a quicker way to traverse them than vaulting over them.)

CROUCHING & ROLLING:

Soon after the tutorials on jumping and shooting, the player is introduced to crouching and rolling.

Of the two, crouching is the less amusing one. Crouching reduces Hardboiled’s profile, allowing him to hide behind crates and other low obstacles to avoid attacks.

Rolling is the more amusing one, but not due to great design on the part of the game-makers.

Crouching is practically a toggle between two movement modes for Hardboiled. When he is standing, he goes into a run when he starts moving. When he is crouching, he rolls instead of running – and he can roll forever, without feeling any strain.

Furthermore, rolling occurs at the same speed as running. Therefore, considering this and that Hardboiled’s profile is reduced when he is rolling, there is no reason not to keep rolling instead of running.

(Dropping down from a height while rolling does happen to cancel the rolling animation.)

SHOOTING:

The game increases the number of enemies as the player progresses in the playthrough. As this happens, it would be difficult for the player not to notice certain conveniences and limitations in the designs of shooting.

Firstly, Hardboiled has no need to reload the magazines of his weapons, even though every gun in this game appears to be based on real-world ones and clearly have magazines too. This convenience also extends to his enemies.

Of course, one could argue that this lack of believability should not be criticised so heavily when the premise happens to involve anthropomorphic birds after all. However, this argument would be too forgiving, especially if one of the limitations of shooting is considered, which will be described shortly.

Secondly, any character with a gun appears to be only able to shoot ahead of himself, including the player character. No one can bend their torsos to aim at something above or below them. This also means that the mouse is quite useless for the purposes of shooting.

Even in the aerial combat segments of the game, the combatants are still only shooting ahead of them. They may seem to be able to shoot at any direction, but that is because they are already facing that direction in the first place. This also applies to Hardboiled.

Thirdly – and this one goes against the believability of the game too – characters have to be shot a lot for them to die.

If there is any design of shooting which can be technically justified, it is that characters who have been shot would be juggled into the air and can be continuously juggled by shooting at them some more. This can be rationalized as a consequence of the anthropomorphic birds’ light weight, assuming that their physiology still follows that of birds.

The juggling also affects Hardboiled himself, so if the player is not careful, he/she could get Hardboiled caught in a juggling loop when he is shot by many enemies. This is an acceptable caveat though, because the player can do the same against enemies.

However, the juggling mechanism also happens to highlight the limitation of only being able to shoot straight. To elaborate, juggled characters can stop being juggled because they have recoiled up above the line of fire and happen to fall in between volleys.

The juggling mechanism also reveals another problem with the game. Enemies who have already been killed while being juggled can be continuously juggled, meaning that the player would be wasting bullets on flailing corpses.

This problem is made all the more frustrating because this juggling of corpses was deliberately implemented by the developers as a way to obtain some collectibles. (These will be described later.)

Bullets arrive immediately at where they are shot at, including those shot by the enemy. Therefore, it is in the player’s interest to shoot already-alert enemies when they appear on-screen before they shoot instead.

AMMUNITION:

Although Hardboiled does not need to reload the magazines of his weapons, he does need ammunition for them. This depicted through the beige gauge next to his health bar. It is in the player’s interest to keep this bar filled, because shooting is the main way of killing enemies.

As had been depicted in an earlier screenshot, enemies do drop clips of ammunition, but their contributing amounts are small. Therefore, shooting enemies up just enough to kill them is a practice which the player may want to foster (if the player does not care about juggling enemies, of course).

PUNCHING & KICKING:

Hardboiled can perform close-combat attacks on enemies which are too close; if he is standing, he punches them. If he is in a running animation, he boots enemies instead. Generally, the game is competent in knowing when the player wants to perform these attacks.

The main purpose of these attacks is to knock down enemies and force them into a getting-up animation, which gives Hardboiled enough time to move past said enemies. There is no damage dealt.

Therefore, such attacks are only meant to help the player get past enemies if Hardboiled is lacking the ammunition to deal with them permanently. However, the game does not make it clear to the player that the close-combat attacks are only effective at this.

PURSUING (& NOT PURSUING) ENEMIES:

Enemies which have detected Hardboiled’s presence will pursue him as long as he remains on the same platform and any platform which they can reach via vaulting. Although all enemies can jump like Hardboiled can, they rarely use jumping to pursue Hardboiled onto other platforms.

Consequently, jumping or dropping down onto other platforms, even those within the same screen, is a viable way to stop their pursuit; this also resets their patrol behaviour.

OFF-SCREEN ENEMIES:

Enemies which are in the same screen as Hardboiled can hurt him, and vice versa. Those who are off-screen can do nothing; neither can Hardboiled hurt them. Even if it looks as if Hardboiled can shoot down a corridor to hit enemies off-screen, this will not work. Even grenades bounce off the edges of the screens, if the player attempts to toss grenades. (Learning about this the hard way can be unpleasant too.)

Furthermore, only enemies in the same screen can detect Hardboiled’s presence. Even if they appear to be in the same corridor as he is and should be able to see him by looking down the corridor, they won’t be able to if they are not in the same screen.

The game does not inform the player about these limitations though. An unsuspecting player may well waste lots of bullets shooting down what he/she thinks is a corridor in the next screen before realizing that the enemies in the next screen are not even hurt at all.

GUNS:

Guns are a fixture in the game, as the promotional material for the game would have shown already.

Yet, without the believable limitation of magazines as mentioned earlier, there is one fewer source of differences among the guns, to the detriment of the game’s sophistication. There are other issues with the guns in the game, unfortunately.

Hardboiled starts with a trusty handgun. Any additional weapons which he gets are those which he finds as the player progresses through the levels. Finding weapons is a certainty, because they are placed in the player’s path.

Later, he gains the submachinegun, which fires a lot more shots per second but has less damage per shot. It is actually the most inefficient gun in the game from the perspective of ammo expenditure, but for a long while before the player finds its straight upgrade, it is the only gun which can juggle enemies. (Juggling enemies is needed for the triggering of signs, as will be elaborated later.)

Next, there is the shotgun. Like most video game shotguns, it is more powerful at closer ranges, but have relatively slow firing rates. It is more useful for dealing with tough individual targets, but not effective against clusters of enemies (which is a surprise, because most video game shotguns are meant to be used in such circumstances).

This is due to the 2-D nature of the gameplay. The shotgun cannot shoot past enemies which are in front of other enemies.

After that, there is the carbine (or at least it looks like one to this reviewer). With its higher damage per shot, this is practically a straight upgrade to the submachinegun; the game even replaces the submachinegun with the carbine outright.

Similarly, the light machinegun appears to be a straight upgrade to the shotgun. It is only capable of burst-fire instead of fully automatic fire. Each burst across any range appears to do as much damage as a shotgun blast at point-blank range, but it gobbles more ammo per shot.

GRENADES:

Eventually, the player character comes across a box of grenades – and is forever equipped with an unlimited supply of grenades afterwards.

Grenades, as their names imply, are thrown explosives. They are generally meant to be used against enemies who are not aware of Hardboiled’s presence. This is because their detonation delay will always be there; the player cannot cook grenades (even if it looks like Hardboiled is cooking grenades). The detonation delay simply makes them impractical against already alert enemies.

Due to the unlimited supply of grenades, the player is better off simply spamming grenades to hit something instead of timing the grenades. The game does not reward finesse.

The game does punish carelessness though; grenades which go off next to Hardboiled can injure him, but oddly enough, does not kill him. Hardboiled’s health can be reduced to near-zero from such accidents though, so he can be killed by enemy fire.

KNIFE:

For whatever reason, the Knife is the last weapon which the player would find – and only from pursuing an achievement too.

The Knife obviously does not require ammo, and does enough damage to eliminate regular enemies outright with single blows.

Yet, considering that bullets arrive immediately, the knife is not the most practical of weaponry to use in the game, unless the player can ambush enemies from behind.

There are some achievements which require its use, but otherwise, there would be little reason to use the knife.

ENEMIES:

If the premise does not suggest so already, the majority of the enemies which the player would be fighting and killing are the anthropomorphic penguins.

Thematically, they are little more than avian versions of the stereotypical USSR soldiers seen in Hollywood films of the Cold War era.

Most enemies appear as footsoldiers. They either stand around looking at one direction at a time or patrol around the platform which they are on, also looking at one direction at a time. If the player character happens to be standing at where they are looking at (and standing on the same level as they are), he will be spotted, and they will start shooting.

As mentioned earlier, bullets arrive immediately and Hardboiled can be juggled. However, Ratloop has included some forgiving designs.

Firstly, they utter a warning when they spot Hardboiled, thus allowing the player to simply kill them before they let off a shot. Secondly, they rarely make full use of their unlimited ammunition reserves, so even if the player character gets juggled, he rarely is juggled for long.

There are more types of enemies than just the gun-toting soldiers, but the others would not surprise experienced players. This is because they belong to enemy archetypes which had been in video games for a long time. For example, there are large brutes with shields who can only be attacked from behind.

MIND BUGS:

For whatever reason, the rebelling poultry have somehow obtained special weapons in the form of mind-controlling bugs. These bugs, through some unexplained process, can somehow transfer the mind of their user into the head of their victim.

A Mind Bug is a thrown projectile. If it lands next to any weak-minded enemy, it pops up and explodes, infecting said enemy with weird gases. Eventually, the player is granted control over said enemy. The player can then do whatever he/she wants with said enemy.

The player will be using the possessed victim to infiltrate into enemy territory and remove obstacles – usually through shooting other enemies when they least expect betrayal. However, while the player is doing, Hardboiled is vulnerable to attacks; getting attacked snaps the player back to control Hardboiled in his defence.

Generally, Mind Bugs are quite fun to use. Yet, they do come with issues.

The first of these is the unbelievable convenience of enemies repeatedly spawning in order to allow the player to possess enough of them and expend them for the achievement of a solution to a puzzle.

The second of these is a visual oddity. The Mind Bugs are thrown like grenades; Hardboiled even shakes them to cook them, implying that the Mind Bugs share the same animations as those for grenades.

This can make the Mind Bugs seem as if they were a late addition to the game and had been implemented just for the amusement which they provide.

One could argue that the game should not be taken seriously, considering its premise, but such silliness clashes with the grimmer themes of the game, such as Hardboiled’s dark past and upbringing.

Initially, the possession process of the Mind Bugs is an animation which can last many seconds; it also includes gibberish uttered by the victim. This always turns out looking the same way for any enemy. Waiting for the player to be able to take control of the victim can become boring quite quickly.

Fortunately, the game-makers themselves are aware of this. Eventually, the process animation is reduced to almost a mere blink of an eye.

HIDING PLACES:

Early on in the second chapter of the game, the player is introduced to the minor gameplay mechanism of alcoves. Characters which are in front of alcoves can choose to back themselves into the alcove. For all purposes, they are invincible when hiding in an alcove.

If the player can hide Hardboiled in an alcove, there is nothing much enemies can do either. In fact, their behaviour eventually reset, and they will not even know that Hardboiled is there.

JETPACK:

The titular appeal of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is the inclusion of jetpacks in the game.

Apparently, the penguins were able to gain superiority over the chickens and their fellow poultry through fielding of troops who are trained in the use of nuclear-powered rocket packs which are strapped to their backs.

(People who know that penguins do not exactly fly may be amused by this outrageousness.)

Due to story-related reasons, Hardboiled happens to know how to use jetpacks too – and he apparently likes to use them.

The jetpack sequences change the control scheme of the game. Instead of using the “WSAD” keys to move about, the player uses the Spacebar to fire Hardboiled’s jetpack and move him forwards in the direction which he is facing. As for the direction which he is facing, the player uses the mouse to change it; the “W” and “D” keys help to some extent too.

This is a very good control set-up, considering the kind of combat which the player would be getting into.

Hardboiled will be pitted against many similarly equipped enemies who will be flying about shooting away at him. The A.I. is usually competent most of the time, so the player may want to keep an eye on where they are.

As for where enemies are, the game makes use of a considerable camera zoom-out. This is not exactly enough though.

To elaborate, it has to be said here that unlike the other mode of gameplay (that is, the side-scrolling action-platformer), enemies can shoot at Hardboiled when they are not within the screen and vice versa. The camera zoom-out, as far out as it is, is still not enough to show every enemy which is engaging Hardboiled.

The gameplay of these sequences could have benefited from visual indicators which show the whereabouts of off-screen enemies. However, there are none, so the player must figure out where they are by looking for their smoke contrails or more likely than not, their tracer fire when they shoot at the player.

Oddly enough though, there is an arrow indicator which points to where the player needs to go in order to progress in the level after all aerial enemies have been dealt with.

If there are any more issues with the jetpack sequences, it is what happens after them. There are long lift rides (which will be described further later), and some hilarious and unbelievable animations involving the still-strapped-on jetpack.

CHAPTERS & CHAPTER GOALS:

The game’s experience is split into 17 chapters. Each chapter is actually quite short, even if the player goes round and round in it to look for signs (assuming that the player knows about the need to keep certain enemies alive in order for them to reach signs).

Although there is a pretext for what the player does in the game – namely Hardboiled’s struggle against the penguins and his mission of assassination – what the player would be doing is little more than having Hardboiled go from point A to point B.

There are levels which put obstacles in the player’s way. This requires some thinking to overcome. However, players who think further than needed would realize that they have been doing little more than pushing crates around and hunting for keycards. This is gameplay which has been done many, many times before in other video games.

CHECKPOINTS:

The game makes use of a checkpoint-based system to record the player’s progress. When the player passes through a checkpoint, his/her progress in a chapter is updated into the save-file which he/she has chosen for his/her playthrough.

Any playthrough ever only has one save-file which is dedicated to it, so if the player passes through another checkpoint, the player’s recorded progress is overwritten. Fortunately, this is a minor issue, because the player can reload and replay any chapter after he/she has played through it for the first time.

The checkpoint system would have been typically adequate at being a checkpoint system if not for the lack of any clear indication of where they are.

This would not be an issue if the player intends to just blow through the levels, but it will be one if the player intends to find all the signs in a chapter. Some signs can only be obtained at certain points within a chapter; if the player misses this opportunity, he/she has to retry the entire level.

If all the player wants from the game is to blow through it, the checkpoints might come in handy. This is because Hardboiled has his health and ammo reset whenever a checkpoint is reloaded.

DIALOGUES AND MONOLOGUES:

During levels, the player may notice the presence of some enemies who are just standing around, obviously not on alert.

Some of these dialogues and monologues can be hilarious, which give enemies, especially the penguins some character.

Yet, it has to be said here that if there is any amusing depiction of the penguins, they are only ever seen in-game, and not in the cutscenes. In the cutscenes, they are usually depicted as cruel and easy to hate, and they are not voiced at all.

Conversely, Hardboiled is never seen talking in-game, but only ever talks during cutscenes; he does not have very good lines either.

COLLECTIBLES:

Like almost any other game in the present-day, Hardboiled Chicken has collectibles for the player to seek out. Unfortunately, the collectibles hurt the game more than they enrich it.

In every level, there are a set of three “signs” scattered throughout it. The player “collects” these signs by having the sprite of any character – usually Hardboiled’s – touch them.

However, the caveat here is that only one untouched sign is visible at any one time. After touching one, the next one appears somewhere else in the level, usually where the player has gone through earlier.

Yet another caveat is that the backtracking which the player has to do is not as simple as simply having him run back to where he was earlier. More often than not, the player has to do something tedious, like pushing crates around, to cite the simpler tedious busywork.

Some of the signs require the player to actually bypass or evade enemies, if only to keep them alive for later. This is because some of the signs can only be triggered by having an enemy juggled into them through gunfire.

An unsuspecting player who has yet to realize this might find that some signs are simply out of reach.

So far, from this reviewer’s experience, the only way to learn this naturally without having to resort to guides is to play the game at Hard difficulty. The first possible lesson on this is an enemy which is standing on a ledge, with an unreachable sign a distance away from this enemy. On Hard difficulty, this enemy absorbs enough bullets such that he dies when he has just touched the sign.

On Normal difficulty, he tends to die before touching the sign, thus prompting the unsuspecting player to stop shooting in order to conserve ammunition.

The most important consequence of this design for collectibles is that enemies can be juggled even after they have died. From having played through the game, the player would realize that triggering signs is the only practical reason for the juggling mechanism to be around.

Already dead enemies only stop being juggled after they drop to the ground. Therefore, to avoid wasting bullets on corpses, the player has to stop firing in order for them to fall on the ground. This is risky, because still-living enemies will stop being juggled too, thus requiring the player to re-juggle them again.

SILLY ACHIEVEMENTS:

In addition to collectibles, there is yet another present-day game design trope which Hardboiled Chicken follows: achievements.

Some of these simply have been implemented just for the sake of including some silliness in the game, to the detriment of the game’s already shaky believability. An example of these can be seen in the screenshot below.

DIFFICULTY SETTING:

When starting the playthrough of any chapter, the player is given the choice of setting the difficulty for it.

There are only two settings: “Normal” and “Hard”. These do the usual exchanging of damage inflicted on enemies and damage inflicted on the player character. The expenditure rate of ammunition for shooting is also increased for “Hard”.

Enemies also appear to be a bit more responsive in “Hard”. They appear to duck and roll more often, and in jetpack sequences, they turn a lot more often. This is a welcome challenge.

The difficulty settings, however, do not influence the behaviour of enemies outside of combat. They remain as dim as they are regardless of settings when they are patrolling or standing around.

The difficulty settings also do not change the density of enemies, though this is perhaps for the better.

ARTSTYLE:

The artstyle of the game makes its impression very early on. It is an impression which is strong enough to have a player forget about the game’s shortcomings at times.

The dystopian themes of the game show through the sad-looking run-down cities which the penguins are occupying and the military bases which they have built for their own use. These mostly gel well with the severe (if a bit goofy) looks of the anthropomorphic birds.

The grimness of these locales do occasionally give way to outrageous sights, such as a spick-and-span museum which the Penguins have built to revel in their own self-perceived superiority.

Then there are massive bomb-dropping blimps which happen to have huge screens on their sides, supposedly for propaganda purposes. These can be seen in the jetpack sequences, and appropriately so.

LIFT RIDES:

The game has a lot of lovingly done artwork, but some of them is used to hide background loading. This is usually seen when Hardboiled has to take particularly long lift rides. These tend to occur between the transition between the outside of a blimp (which is usually a jetpack sequence) and its insides (which is typically a 2D corridor crawler).

DECALS & 3D DEPTH:

One of the aspects of Hardboiled Chicken which differentiate it from so many other 2-D action platformers is its graphics. Of course, it is not the first to do this.

Anyway, from the screenshots which have been shown earlier, it should be obvious that Hardboiled Chicken has lavishly done background art, albeit it looks quite static.

The background art is not entirely unchanging though. Whenever the player shoots an enemy who is next to a wall which is not too far into the background, the wall gets splattered with red tint decals. The decals are not exactly believable blood, but this is still a nice visual touch.

FACIAL ANIMATIONS:

Peculiarly, there is a lack of facial animations among the characters of this game.

The penguins almost always have helmets and hats which cover half of their eyes, thus limiting any expression through their eyes to little more than looks of sinister determination. In fact, the only penguin who is seen with varying and noticeable facial expressions is Hardboiled’s target, Putzki.

The chickens and fellow poultry do not have the excuse of having helmets to hide some of their facial features with.

If the penguins are known for looking sinister and determined, the chickens, turkeys and quails are known for perpetually scowling. Their eyebrows are knitted together as if this is part of their physiology instead of their current mood.

The lack of facial animations can also be seen outside of cutscenes, when characters have text-oriented conversations in the levels.

Even if it may have been deliberate, the lack of facial animations happens to work against the stylish appeal of the game. One can argue that it is silly to a degree, but if it is, Ratloop had not exploited it enough.

SPRITES:

Ratloop makes use of sprites which are made of multiple parts stitched together and animated as if each character is one whole sprite. This is nothing new in indie games, but it is not immediately clear to anyone who is not keen-eyed; each character does look like he has his own sprite, instead of sharing similar parts with other characters.

However, as skilled as the animators are at animating sprites, they have left some loose ends untied. An example of these can be seen whenever Hardboiled jumps; it can seem a bit silly.

Then there are the limited transitory animations. Although animations such as crouching, standing up and getting up after being knocked down do have frames showing the transitions from pose to pose, the other animations do not.

Chief of these is the lack of any transitory animations for rolling, which in turn allows the player to have Hardboiled rolling across the ground throughout entire levels, as mentioned earlier.

Then, there is the fact that Hardboiled rolls through vents and other spaces. Although this is a hilariously silly sight, he could have crawled through them instead, which would have been more believable.

VOICE-ACTING & WEIRD ANIMAL NOISES:

The player can hear the voice-acting for characters In cutscenes, but it is so bland that that it does not deliver on the intent of the writing, which is to have the characters sound as bad-ass as they look bad-ass. As mentioned earlier, Hardboiled has boring voice-acting. The other two characters who have actual voice-acting sound even more boring.

Outside of cutscenes and in actual gameplay, the characters “talk” with frequently repeated clips of what sounds like animal noises. To follower of nature documentaries, they may not sound like avian noises though.

Other than that, they grunt and groan when they are injured, but these sound clips do not appear to differ much from person to person. (Brutes get their own typically deep growls and moans though.)

SOUND EFFECTS & AMBIENT NOISES:

Most of the sound effects which the player would hear are of course gunfire. Although it has been mentioned earlier that guns are not very believable in this game, they at least do sound satisfying.

Other than gunfire, there are the sound clips for things such as grenades and the Mind Bugs. The Mind Bugs, in particular, have some sound clips which are unique to them, such as the peculiar drumming which can be heard after a victim has been possessed.

Then, there are ambient noises. These are generally associated with their levels and for the most part sound quite appropriate.

MUSIC:

Much of the music is composed by New World Revolution, which is a group with non-permanent members.

Nevertheless, the Rocketbird series has benefited from Ratloop’s partnership with New World Revolution. The latter’s music is very stirring and contributes to the stylish appeal of the game.

Most of the music consists of bass guitar and drums, i.e. the usual instruments used for rock, and the rest is filled in with electronically-made tunes.

The lyrics which accompany the tunes, however, are not as spectacular. The vocalist delivers his lines clearly, but he lists frequently between droning and carrying the melody of the song.

MINOR AUDIO ISSUE:

With the sound effects and music described, a bug which affects them would be described next.

After having installed the game, every time the player launches the Humble Bundle version of the game, he/she has to re-adjust the volume settings for music and sound effects.

This issue can be solved by restarting the computer. Perhaps the game needs this in order to establish a presence in the registry of the OS of the computer, but if this is so, it is a hassle, albeit a small one.

LOCAL CO-OP:

Perhaps just for the sake of having multiplayer, there is a feature for co-op multiplayer. As a fact which contributes to the impression that the multiplayer of the game has not been developed in earnest, the Humble Bundle version of the game does not have any multiplayer options beyond local co-op.

Furthermore, the local co-op mode has some rigid hardware requirements, namely only one of the players may use the keyboard-mouse setup.

Unfortunately, due to this reviewer’s boycott of Xbox products and refusal to obtain products which emulate the Xbox 360 controller, this review was done without first-hand experience in the local co-op. This reviewer is not interested enough to consider putting effort into looking for work-arounds either.

Perhaps in the future, there might be a return to this game to check out the local co-op, but for now, watching others’ playthroughs of the local co-op has not convinced this reviewer that local co-op has gameplay which is interesting enough to warrant earnest attention from this reviewer.

CONCLUSION:

Players who want sophisticated gameplay in the games which they play would be advised to steer clear of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken. However, more open-minded players might just be entertained by its weird premise and the stylish way which it is presented with.