Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland review
Wooo wheee! Now this is a proper blast from the past! When’s the last time you thought of Rugrats? The gang is back in Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland, and you get to play them in modern HD sprites, or in their early 90s glory as 8-bit sprites! Yes, the game can be switched between 8-bit and HD, and it doesn’t really affect the game play!
Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland plays like an old school NES or GameBoy era platformer, where there are only 2 buttons along with your D-pad. You jump with one button, and pick up objects with the other, or lift, as the game calls it. Jumping on most enemies will defeat them, with a ground pound available for more hardy enemies. Sometimes, some enemies will remain on the ground, dazed after being jumped on. You may then pick them up and throw them at other enemies or just endlessly toss them around until they wake up!
So that’s about it for the game play, it is simply an old school platformer where you go about collecting gold coins as the rewards. The demo only showed one level, ending in a boss fight, but there was a lot of Rugrats charm on display. The game allows you to play as one of four characters, Tommy, Chucky, Phil, and Lil, each with their own strengths, variations in their jump and lift strength. Players may switch characters in the pause menu, allowing them to switch to other characters as and when it is favourable, or simply switching to play as their favourites.
The game is definitely one for players who enjoy old-school platformer gaming, specifically the NES era. In fact, apart from the usual digital release on PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and XBox Series X, the game is going to have a limited run of physical copies for all of the above platforms, plus for the NES! Yes it is going to be playable on the NES! So for all the retro gamers, you’ll have an excuse to bring out your prized NES console and controllers and play an all new game on it, when’s the last time you could play a new game on the NES anyway? The game has 2 player co-op included, so that’s definitely another plus point, couch co-op with a buddy!
Now before you rush out to pre-order the game, there are some flaws to Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland. As a game that would exist in the late 80s/early 90s, it retains some of the flaws from that era, probably purposefully. There were no tutorials or instructions of any kind from the moment the Start button was pressed, and you had to figure out everything by instinct. It was a little embarrassing for me when I reached the boss fight and had no idea how to navigate it because I had not learnt that you could pick up stunned enemies and throw them, there was simply no opportunity to do it in the level prior. I had to sacrifice 3 lives trying to jump at the boss before figuring out there was something more with the little plastic spider that kept spawning in the middle. If you’re okay with that, then I have nothing else to add on about this charming game from yesteryear, and you should get it on whichever platform you want to!
