RAD would have been a fairly ordinary roguelike about harsh everyday life in a post-apocalyptic environment, if the game had not been made by a studio Double Fine Productions. Therefore, there are two apocalypses here at once, the world that survived all this is made in the style of the 80s, and the heroes, similar to typical teenagers, breakdancers and punks of those years, can kill enemies with their own mutated head, throwing it like a bomb. But was the signature humor enough for a truly interesting “bagel”??
Floppy disks are useful again!
From any game Double Fine you’re always waiting for an interesting story, but.. RAD it is mainly hidden in notes and diaries (the so-called Book of the Ancients), which, as you progress, are gradually replenished with new texts about the characters and the history of the world.
The plot is extremely simple and traditional for bagels – and is somewhat similar to what we saw in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. There is a settlement of survivors that needs resources from the wild Wasteland, where, however, not a squad of stalkers goes, but only one volunteer from among the settlers. Saving is only allowed in the city – there is an Elder, characters who can give out some side quest, a merchant and a local ATM where you can deposit money earned during forays into the Wasteland.
More precisely, we do not earn money, but old VHS tapes that fall out of monsters. It is cassettes that are considered the main currency here, for which you need to buy useful items from merchants (and they are found not only in the city, but also in the Wasteland) – from potions that temporarily increase the chance of a critical hit, to artifacts and equipment.
We also find or buy floppy disks – the same ones from the times of the first Pentiums. For them you can open chests with the same consumables, cassettes, artifacts and pieces of equipment that provide permanent passive effects – for example, they double the influx of capital, allow you to make double jumps, walk painlessly on fiery or radiation-infected surfaces, give you a chance to save some cassettes even after the death of the hero, and so on.
In addition to the main campaign, there are also daily challenges with ratings and special game rules – for example, you may get reduced health, but increased damage.
Post-apocalyptic ATMs
Such funny references to the 80s https://betfoxcasino.co.uk/ and 90s in RAD a lot, but the local radioactive wastelands themselves do not stand out in any way. And the fact that two disasters happened in this world at once does not affect anything (well, except for the history of the setting described in the notes). There are a lot of all kinds of mutated creatures, overgrown scorpions spitting poison or fire, green puddles and burning surfaces that it is better not to step into. And rusty car frames, tires, some furniture, discarded televisions..
At the same time, the world is RAD not open. All locations are separate maps, on each of which we perform the same sequence of actions. First you need to break through the crowds of monsters and activate several pedestals, after which the passage to the level boss will open. Having defeated him, we can return to the settlement or immediately move on to the next map.
It’s better, of course, to first run to your native land – there you can save, buy a potion and hand over all the collected cassettes to the local ATM. And this is important, because after the death of a hero, all his achievements are irretrievably lost, including levels, artifacts, mutations and money. And if you have time to hand over the tapes to the ATM, then during the next playthrough the new hero will be able to withdraw this amount and immediately gain a certain advantage by buying something useful. In addition, progress is expressed in the fact that some items found in one trip during a new trip will immediately become available in stores or in the list of trophies dropped from monsters.
Beat your enemies with their own weapons. And tail
However, the most useful thing for survival in RAD – these, as you already understood, are mutations that both externally change the hero beyond recognition and give him a variety of abilities. A young man with a mohawk and a denim jacket or a girl in a helmet (the heroes differ only in their skins) gradually grow tails, pinches, snake heads, wings, poisonous legs and God knows what else.
You can hit with your tail, or you can spit out small cuttlefish from it, which will fight with you. The snake’s head is meant to scare and bite from a distance, and its poisonous limbs leave behind green acid that injures opponents who step into it. There are also boomerang arms that come off, telepathic brains that need to be thrown at enemies to temporarily lure them to your side, and much more.
We earn active mutations when we gain new levels, and when we activate special statues, passive ones open up, increasing our life reserves or giving additional effects to existing abilities. Passives also drop from defeated bosses. But it’s impossible to predict which mutation you’ll get.
A matter of chance
IN RAD, As is customary in bagels, a lot depends on luck. Locations, enemies, chests, a set of artifacts and mutations – everything changes with each new outing. As usual, you will have to die often. And if you are not lucky, then even more often.
During one run, you will constantly come across merchants, chests, cassettes and pieces of healing meat falling out of monsters (it, of course, restores health), and you will also receive very useful mutations like a bomb head. And next time everything will be exactly the opposite, and even the boss will come across exactly the one with whom it is better not to get close – and your mutations are precisely oriented towards close combat. Yes, yes, it seemed to me that some abilities in RAD frankly more useful and effective than others – for example, in my cases long-range mutations were cooler.
The local combat system is not so flexible and diverse that you can pull out tough fights using sleight of hand, reflexes and combo attacks alone. First of all, I’m talking about battles with bosses, which, due to the above reasons, can be very difficult in one outing, and much easier in another. There is a regular and enhanced blow with a bat (by the way, it would not hurt to have more variety in the arsenal!), a running jump kick and the ability to jump and then crash to the ground, demolishing everyone around. Moreover, almost all locations are islands hanging somewhere in space, so you need to jump carefully, otherwise you will easily fall into the abyss and lose a lot of nerves and health.
Jokes of humor
But the residents of the survivor settlement react funny to all mutations, whether they are useful or not. If you have poisonous feet, they will tell you something like, “Sorry, you’re dripping.”!». If instead of a head there is a skull-bomb, then they will ask if everything is okay with your head. And one day the Elder asked my character, who was covered in thorns, not to accidentally prick or cut one of the locals. Such details, changing depending on the type of character, look very cool.
And in general in RAD quite a lot of funny things. For example, there are representatives of the religious sect of the Followers of the Cathode, who worship ancient tube televisions and believe that when God 2.0 starts broadcasting, they will receive his signal. Or a mutant with goat horns and hooves, who has set up an experimental farm in the settlement and is now asking to get something for him. And the Elder controls all the complex structures of the Ancients with the help of a typical synthesizer, which appeared in the videos of many musical groups of the 80s.
RAD is far from the first game where the main character gradually mutates before our eyes: this happened in "Blood Magic", Darkspore or in the already mentioned Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. But in those games, as a rule, we can control these mutations ourselves and develop/maintain them in the chosen direction. And here the amount of randomness is high even by the standards of roguelikes – almost all progress is reset in each new outing, and it is unknown what we will get in return. This is both a gift and a curse of the game: on the one hand, you never know what awaits you, and on the other hand, this approach will clearly not appeal to those who appreciate more thoughtful control over the character.
Pros: humor, style, interesting setting and funny characters; generally exciting gameplay based on fighting, exploration, leveling up and collecting; very different and sometimes unexpected mutations; nice picture; nostalgic music in the style of the 80s.
Cons: too much depends on the “random”; there is virtually no control over which direction the character develops; small arsenal of weapons; weak animation.