RAD - Review

RAD is the latest roguelike game to hit the market, sure the market might be flooded with roguelike games at the moment, both good and bad but I can guarantee you that you have never seen one with a stage quite like this before. RAD is bright and colourful, almost neon in the approach to its colour palette and also features a rocking synth-new wave soundtrack. The whole aesthetic of the game seems to be inspired by classic 80’s movies such as Escape From New York and the music sounds like as if Joy Division and Depeche Mode joined forces, which is great seeing as these are two of my favourite bands, I found myself bopping away with a smile on my face several times without even realising it whilst playing.

In RAD you are tasked with rebuilding the world after it has suffered its way through two massive apocalypses, you do this by traversing desolate landscapes littered with various mutated creatures and reaching purifying machines which when turned on will clear the area of radiation and make that corner of the world inhabitable again. Speaking of radiation you will encounter a lot of this on your journey, whilst in most games and in real life we are taught to steer clear of this toxic substance, in RAD it can present a huge advantage and will cause your RAD meter to fill up and your character to mutate and provide you with specific advantages in combat which can be both passive such as providing extra health or give you extra special abilities in combat allowing you to splat your enemies into larger pools of goo than usual.

There are a vast amount of mutations in the game and this is where a lot of the fun comes in, whether it comes from running around punching enemies with a fist that spontaneously bursts into flame or sliding around leaving a slug-like toxic goo behind you that damages enemies. The game leaves you looking forward to filling up your RAD meter just to see what hilarious or horrifying mutation will come next and then testing these out on the various mutants to see which mutation works best for each opponent, this especially comes into play when facing one of the large boss mobs that you will encounter on your journeys.

The game is played via a top down view which suits the action remarkably well and there are lots of items strewn throughout the landscapes that will give you a massive feeling of 80’s nostalgia, the levels are very well designed and provide enough variety to keep you trudging along on your mission. RAD is not a game for those with a tendency to take controllers and snap them in half though as I would not consider it easy and if you are prone to frustration you might find yourself getting turned off from playing and giving up, in saying this it is nowhere near the difficulty of a “souls like” game even though it is genuinely challenging, especially some of the boss fights.

You can tell that a lot of love has been put into RAD from the excellent soundtrack through to the cleverly designed levels, variations of mutations and fluid yet difficult combat that the game offers, one big thing I think the developers should’ve considered though is co-op play as this would be the perfect game for either couch or online co-op to be implemented and I can’t help but think that was a massive missed opportunity by the developers. If you are into the 80’s (and let’s face it who isn’t the 80’s were RAD!!!) and like roguelike games then you could do much worse than give this game a go, after all there are much worse ways of spending time than bopping away to an excellent synth soundtrack splattering mutants and finding out which hilarious mutation is going to happen to your character as you play

Review code provided by Bandai Namco