Just waiting to rip you off.
The Ripping Friends was a show created by the mind behind Ren and Stimpy, but we are adults, so we should be able to
separate the art from the artist. Regardless, the game is still bland. I came in to the game hoping for a decent beat'em up, leaving my disgust for the guy
aside, but the game
disappoints in more ways than one.
The game is six stages
short, and each stage has its own 3-4 paragraph long introduction telling you why you find your character in such a place. Fanservice? Plot?
Who needs those things! You can play as any of the four different heroes from the show, each one having
slightly different abilities and stats, which means that you might want to try each one out until you figure out which one you like the most. For instance, I liked how the guy in red looked, but I found the guy with the cape much more fun to use. Can you tell that I never watched the show before?
Regardless, none of the humor from the series is present here, unless you consider the bad guys' names humor.
I didn't. Aside from the main campaign, there are also a few multiplayer modes.
The Ripping Friends is an isometric beat'em up. Each character has access to a jump as well as a dodge by pressing R+A. B is your basic attack, R+B is an
alternate attack, characters also have two different
aerial attacks(B or R+B after jumping). By landing hits, or holding the B button for a while, you can charge an energy gauge, pressing A+B will activate RIPPING TIME, which consume said gauge and makes you faster and stronger, also grants you access to your R+L super move. At first, I thought that the only move worth doing was the jump kick, and
relied on hit and run tactics, since enemies were granted a pretty
generous invincibility period upon getting back up. But later I learned that there's actually a rather
interesting combo system! Basically, if you use a different attack from the attack you just used
JUST as it hits, it will chain together into a combo. Each character has very different attacks, and it was fun trying them out, for instance, you can jump attack into basic attack into alternate B and then jump and attack the enemy as it flies
upwards! Or with the guy with the cape, his alternate attack is a grab that launches the enemy backwards, but if you are fast enough, you can jump and hit him before he falls! Landing combos can be a bit
tough until you get the timing right, but I won't
deny how fun it was.
Sadly, level design is all over the place. Sometimes, things that appear to be objects, such as rocky spikes coming from the ground, are just part of the
flat ground you are standing on. Which is usually for the better, because on the few levels that feature zones that have actual height, they can work a bit wonky. Like, you could've sworn you were standing on it, but you fell down anyways. The latter stages also feature a few life-draining abysses which were a pain to deal with due to the
perspective and wonky 'gravity'. The space stage was horrible, often times you had to rely on moving rocks, but it's easy to
miss them, as you look for
where to go next, since part of their trajectory is beyond the scope of the game's screen. A few stages even had a few parts in which you had to make an
almost blind jump, since the only way to progress was seeing a tiny part of something that looks like a platform beyond the void, and then being a daredevil and
attempt the jump.
The only thing that keeps The Ripping Friends from being a complete disaster is how fun combat can be. How
fun trying out combos with all four characters is, and the fact that all four have different, even if limited, moves makes it all the more
engaging. That aside, the game is short, puts the license to little use and everything else doesn't work very well.
3.0 out of 10
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