Preview | RushOut

LifeisXbox’s RushOut Preview | RushOut is a game for lazy gamers. This is a 3D ragdoll platformer created by PapaCubec and published by PapaCubec Games with simple gameplay that depends on the game’s crazy connected levels. The demo I got to play contains 4 levels, 4 weapons, and 1 ability but promises more upon its release. If you like Takeshi’s castle and enjoy a laugh from time to time, read on to find if this is something worthy of your attention.         

What is RushOut?

RushOut is a mixture of crazy traps, ragdoll physics, and goofy objectives that you don’t see in traditional video games. RushOut from the very beginning of loading it up doesn’t take itself seriously. Chickens invade your screen, pigs, and more UI than you can shake a stick at. The game itself is pretty simple to navigate. You start by creating a character from the character selection screen and there is a decent enough selection here to warrant spending some time with it. Sadly, this is one of the better parts of the game though. Almost immediately after starting, you are thrown into some rather impossible situations. At first, these can be laughed off. As I alluded to at the beginning, this game doesn’t take itself seriously, but quite quickly you will wish that it had.

For the most part, you run around avoiding some very basic obstacles such as parking cones attached to spinning cylinders and your objective is to make it from one checkpoint to the next. The first major issue I ran into was donuts that spawned on a hill and colliding with one sent you flying off of the map. The game tried to point me in a direction where I had to climb a car to get over but my character just kept falling short and laded on more donuts, again, sending me flying off of the map. I managed to interact with a signpost and climb on top of that which allowed me enough height to avoid the donuts entirely and carry on.

The next stage leads me to a hedge maze which was filled with car tyres spinning around trying to knock me down and stormy clouds firing thunder down at me. At this point, the tyre sent me on top of the hedge maze allowing me to navigate past it entirely. What would have been good here is some simple blocking volumes that stopped the player from accessing this part of the game.

Does it look good?

In a nutshell, yes. This is largely in part of the marketplace asset Polygon City by Synty Studios. The game is a mixture of high-quality assets and low poly assets which are bright and colourful enough that it is quite pleasing to look at. The effects look good enough as they are and do a convincing job of making me feel wowed when they do happen. There is one scene in Level 2 where a horde of zombies keep spawning from 2 houses on either side of the map and you can dispatch them with your dual uzi’s or throw bottles of coke at them which act as grenades and cause huge explosions.

Later on in level 4, you unlock a shotgun and you must survive against hordes of zombies that pour out from shipping containers and bad guys that try to shoot you also. This part of the game felt fun and I would have considered making a game based more on this than the obstacle course because, for me, this mechanic was much more refined and playable.

There are some things to like here but what lets the levels down are the chickens.

Should you wishlist it?

At the time of writing this, it needs a lot of work. There are some glaringly bad bugs and issues that really should have been sorted out before even releasing a demo. The chickens I mentioned above home in on you and blow you off of the map resulting in it kicking you back to the checkpoint. The issue here is that the chickens that have spawned don’t despawn and instead continue homing in on you after you respawned. At one point I had over 12 chickens after me and it was impossible to get anywhere, except I found I had to give in to the sweet release of death time and time again. Eventually, I managed to find a way after my 28th attempt and completed the level.

If the developer can fix these issues in time and get out a stable demo, I would happily play it again for a full review, but right now the game is what I would call unplayable. It’s frustrating, harder than it needs to be, and what little fun there is to be had in this game is taken away by the bugs and goofy level design.