Rush Bros. Game Review

History of Purchase

My roommate picked up this game on the last day of the Steam Summer Sale. He purchased the two pack and gifted me the spare copy cause I've gifted him various games over the months. We were both super excited to play this game because we are huge fans of difficult platformer games like Super Meat Boy, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams etc. We finally got around to playing it, and I invested a good couple of hours in the game. These are my thoughts.

Gameplay
This is essentially a two player game. You can play the game single player if you chose, but you will be provided with the same levels. The levels themselves are colorful, and the obstacles can be difficult t navigate through at times. Throughout the level, there are a couple of power ups such as double jump and speed up. When playing two player, there is an extra power up that flips your opponent's screen horizontally which can disorient them for a short amount of time. I found the power ups to be quite basic, although I will admit I liked the speed up power up because of how fast your character could physically run. The controls were similar to every other platformer I have played using my Xbox 360 Controller, except for the "X" button. In Rush Bros, there are certain switches in game that require the player to press the X button rapidly to activate them. I felt the button placement was awkward, but you can re map the controller in game to your own preferences.

What initially interested me about the game was that the obstacles and items within the game moved in rhythm with the background music. Watching blades move in sync with the in game music is fun to watch, on the rare occasion the blades and obstacles sync with the game's music. It added a sense of change and variety because they were songs that I was not familiar with, therefore the movement of the obstacles were unpredictable.

Will all of that in mind, something about this game feels unpolished, almost to the point where it feels incomplete. Despite the very eccentric colors and oddly shaped weapons in the forefront, the backgrounds of the levels looked out of place, as if they were added last minute. During various playthroughs of the game, I found myself not even touching the spikes or other hazardous obstacles, yet dying and having to restart the full level. Another thing that I noticed, that personally saddened me was how there was no plot. I'm not saying EVERY game has to have a plot, but it would make the overall game so much better. Split screen was a bit disappointing for my roommate and I, but we were unsure as to what made it disappointing. I felt the game kind of threw us into the midst of things without any other information other than "Select a level." The game doesn't even mention any tips or tricks for the game. Within Rush Bros. you are able to slide and do a super jump, but unless you are clicking random buttons in game, you'd never know they existed. It'd help the overall game if the developers gave the option for a tutorial.

The game mentioned nothing about wall jumping, despite it being a feature in the game

The Music:

The music selection process was also a bit iffy. The default soundtrack is very EDM like, and although some tracks stand out, the music gets very dry and repetitive fast. At one point, I just muted the game due to how boring the soundtrack became. The game lets you play the music of your choice by letting you manually select what folder the game can access to play media. Whilst playing the various levels, the music will play. I was playing 60FPS just fine, but the second the song changed, the FPS dropped to 5 for a good five to ten seconds, thus effectively stuttering whatever action I was doing to the point of ruining my flow of movement. Also, if the song ends while you are still playing the level, it will not cycle to the next song. I played around with the settings a bit, but you have to manually change the song in game, thus causing the massive FPS drop I referenced before. Lastly, when you switch to the next level, the next song plays, as opposed to continuing from where the previous song left off. It was these little things that irked me as I played the game.

I would overall rate this game a 4.5/10. There was much to be desired with this game, and this game is not for everyone. It felt very unpolished, and there was so much more the developers could have done with the game to make it better. I felt if they waited on the release of this game, and fine tuned the mechanics of it, it would be a stellar game, but as of now, this game does not stack to any popular platformers out, nor music infused games such as Audiosurf