Paint The Town Rainbow
HIGH The platforming and style.
LOW The combat, especially the combat-focused bosses.
WTF The “everyone you know is dead” joke.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.
B-Corp came with promises of making the city a better place. Instead, they installed mind-controlling screens that drained everyone of their free will, creativity, and color. Enter Valah — a leader in an underground resistance called Rakugaki. Armed with paint cans and her trusty robot friend Ayo, they’re going to fight for their freedom and take the city back.
RKGK (pronounced “Rakugaki”) is a 3D platformer where players will control Valah as she battles robots and destroys the mind control technology of B-corp using spray paint. She can run, jump, dash, hover, surf on paint, and use a grapple to traverse levels and fight enemies, all while covering the town in neon colors and stylized graffiti while listening to a fantastic techno soundtrack.
In each level, players can tag mind control screens and pick up coins and ghost tokens that can be used to unlock additional cosmetics for Valah’s outfits or new graffiti art. Tagging a certain number of items will unlock the boss of each area, who must then be defeated for Valah to move on.
Valah can also complete additional challenges in each level, which include things like beating the level quickly, defeating a certain number of enemies, finding hidden graffiti tags, or completing the level without dying. Checking all of these off the list will require a lot of exploration, as RKGK has plenty of hidden secrets and platforming challenges.
While this is a formula for success in general, I did find that RKGK‘s movement mechanics aren’t tuned tightly enough to demand the precision and performance that it does. Everything feels just a bit too floaty and vague — controlling Valah feels loose and slippery in a way that means moving fast doesn’t feel satisfying.
What really got me, though, was how the camera perspective required to see where Valah is in relation to enemies and hazards was a bit fuzzy — it definitely made surviving combat and succeeding in some platforming sections tougher than it needed to be.
I also had some issues with hitboxes. For example, I died many times from hits that looked like they missed me. Valah’s body was often visibly clear of shots being fired at her, but I still ended up taking damage because of some unseen hit clipping her foot. Similarly, there are some areas where there are overlapping laser walls where everything is rendered in the same shade of red, which makes it quite tough to tell where a safe path is.
Another problem with combat is that the period of invincibility between getting hit and when the player is vulnerable again is too short, and boss fights are the worst example of this. Many of the boss arenas have bottomless pits between platforms, and taking a hit means that Valah can’t recover in time to save herself from getting knocked off a ledge. And sometimes when she can recover, the enemies just juggle her. In one instance, I was able to get back to a ledge, only to have the enemy knock me off again as soon as I got back on, repeating in an infinite loop until I died.
Despite those issues, I still enjoyed RKGK. The boss fights are a sore spot that killed my momentum and pushed me towards rage quitting, but I still had a blast pushing the oppressive corporate world back with vibrant colors and great music, and plastering the world with gorgeous graffiti pieces was always a good time. With a campaign that takes around five to six hours to complete, it’s an enjoyably stylish way to spend a weekend.
For me: RKGK gets an 8 out of 10.
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Wabisabi Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of T for Fantasy Violence and Mild Language. From the ESRB website: “This is an adventure platformer in which players assume the role of a graffiti artist trying to save a city from an evil corporation’s control. From a third-person perspective, players run and jump around the city while using paint/art to light up environments and save citizens. Players can dispatch robot enemies or turrets by using dash attacks. During boss battles, players must evade projectiles, explosions, and lasers; bosses are defeated via players’ spray-painting attacks. The words “pr*ck” and “a*s” appear in the game.”
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. There is a High Contrast mode available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles, but they are not resizable. Audio serves aesthetic purposes and is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: This game has fully remappable controls.
While Sonic and Street Fighter were great places to start, his first love was Final Fantasy X when his dad bought a PS2. Ever since, that love for gaming has evolved -- there are a number of game worlds out there, and he intends to explore them all. RPG to horror, platformers to casual and everything in between -- if it’s available, he’ll play it.
While his time is short between writing reviews, tabletop gaming, and attempting to start a cheesecake business, he has caught all 806 pokemon and can speedrun Star Fox 64 in less than 40 minutes. He’s always looking for new things to try and new challenges to conquer. You can find him on Twitter -- @eugene_sax.
- Still Wakes The Deep VIDEO Review - July 9, 2024
- RKGK Video Review - June 27, 2024
- Buckshot Roulette Video Review - June 2, 2024
