Review | RAD (Multi) is a charming, radioactively fun roguelike
Double Fine's venture in the genre invites us to an ever-changing journey into a “post-post-apocalyptic” future.
Double Fine Productions' first entry into the roguelike genre, RAD (Multi) starts from an inventive proposal that contains the main hallmarks of the company's previous successes: a charismatic concept, focus on ambiance and well-polished gameplay, all in a package without much excess.
The idea is to go through cartoonish post-apocalyptic landscapes where we control a (series of) young hero(es) willing to use our own genes as a weapon to turn radioactive chaos against itself. Sounds pretty good, but is it really? Check it out with us!
Developed by Double Fine and published by Bandai Namco , RAD was released in August 2019 for Switch , PS4 , XBO and PC .
The (third) end is near
Yeah, the apocalypse. The dreaded day has come and, surprisingly, mankind has managed to cope with the situation well enough, given the circumstances. What was really disconcerting for us was the second armageddon — this one took everyone by surprise and turned the whole surface of the Earth into an unrecognizable gallery of horrors.
It is in this climate that RAD transposes the quirky humor characteristic of some of Double Fine's productions into the post-apocalyptic science fiction business, presenting a very charismatic scenario, fuelled by some synthwave psychedelia.
The ambiance is undoubtedly one of the great strengths of the game. The colorful backdrops reminded me of the alien landscapes of Ratchet & Clank , and the soundtrack is packed with sensational tracks — including even some retrowave parodies of songs such as Rio, by Duran Duran and Take on Me, by a-ha.
In the midst of this inspired rhythm, our adventure chronicles the journey of a brave young adventurer who is applying to help the mysterious Menders, cosmic tech-savvy beings who are trying to help our planet recover from its two recent hecatombs.
After suffering a terrible setback in their attempt to heal the planet, the Menders resorted to an experimental genetic trick to try and solve the problem. Only under very special conditions is it possible for a living being to break through the chaotic lands of Fallow and reactivate the Breathers, powerful terraforming devices damaged in the second apocalypse.
Rebuilt by their cosmic machinery and equipped with a baseball bat imbued with a Mender's heart, our hero is able to absorb the deadly radiation that pervades the atmosphere and turn it into super-useful mutations to fight the monsters that plague the lost lands of the Fallow.
In the event that the worst happens, Mender technology can rebuild our brave youngster to try again — at the great cost of starting this painful journey from scratch, of course. Thus the atypical adventures of our mutagenic hero take on the contours of a charismatic roguelike where our own DNA is the main battlefield. By exchanging experience points for radiation, rather than equipment that can be discarded and swapped for more powerful versions, the progression of powers in RAD is tied to our character's irreversible transformation.
One of the problems with genetics: it is as ruthless as it is unpredictable! A monstrous snakehead, detachable arm, wings and horns are all part of the power options that can be randomly drawn at each level up. It is up to us to find the best way to put such talents at the service of the planet's continued existance.
Ever-changing adventure
Thus, the dynamics of RAD are organized around repeated attempts to overcome, in one run, a six-level main course. At the end of each level, you can return to the citadel that serves as the hub between missions and take a temporary break from the war, or you may proceed straight to the next sector.
As a roguelike action title, the focus of the experience is on high challenge, coupled with random factors. Dying anywhere along the way means getting back to square one, with very little progression elements fixed between one run and another. No loading or second attempts: it's the good old permadeath fun!
The pillars of a good roguelike are the novelty factor of each run and the balance between randomness and skill in determining the player's success. When well aligned, these factors ensure that the “retry loop” remains encouraging and engaging, balancing permadeath's frustration with the irresistible call for the next attempt. Fortunately, RAD implements both factors more than sufficiently, albeit with some slips.
Random factors determine virtually every aspect of each run. From the design of each level to the acquired superpowers, the found items, and even the bosses at the end of each sector, everything is randomly formatted between journeys. This means that much of the adversity to be faced is determined in a totally circumstantial way: there are attempts that take off quickly, while others seem from the outset destined for failure.
In my experience, both cases have been quite entertaining, each with its own appeal: a promising run increases the tension and suspense surrounding overcoming the game (especially for the first time), but having to make do with our own poor genetic devices can be pretty fun in its own way.
The procedural generation of levels is performed with elegance. Both the visual presentation and the level design of the stages themselves ensure that the first impression of the player is unlikely to be that it is a procedural dungeon, given the level of detail and the organic look with which the pieces of the sets come together.
The game takes great advantage of the basic aspect of its gameplay, strategically engaging simple mazes and slow-moving sectors with very basic aspects of platforming. Most of the time, the player will be exploring the four corners of the surface map or the underground tunnels that connect their different sectors in order to find and activate the Breathers needed to pave the way for the next sector.
Each level has its own set of challenges, which change places but otherwise remain the same. Everything is very intuitive, catch-and-play style. Some of the most pernicious obstacles like pitfalls and some of the damaging elements related to the progression of mutations are introduced blindly and purposefully tricky, making us experience “in the flesh” how arduous the journey through the (post-)post-apocalyptic world can be.
Each activated Breather enhances the Earth's process of terraforming, giving rise to a greenery cover around the areas. In addition, while running through the Fallow lands, our hero also spreads some of the Menders' energy, creating a trail of vegetation that expands over time: a very cool visual effect that in turn serves as a practical visual marker to orient ourselves around the areas we have already covered.
And what would a roguelike adventure be without any kind of loot? Items also play a central role in the experience. The two main collectibles are Tapes, which serve as the primary currency, and Floppies, which serve as keys to unlock chests and doors.
In between phases, Tapes can be deposited in a bank account, which makes them one of the few cumulative aspects between runs. As player investments increase, new features are added to the account. It is possible to withdraw money at no additional cost at the hub, or from varying rates at terminals throughout the Fallow.
Other goods that can be purchased (or found on the map, in chests or killing monsters) are consumable items that, under normal circumstances, can only be stored one at a time by the player; in addition to pieces of equipment, which are also restricted to one at a time. Tracking them down and planning ahead for their use is advised — a good accessory, in particular, may be able to compensate for a more unlucky genetic situation, for example.
Gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Speaking of genetics, of course, the great highlights of the whole deal are the mutations suffered by our hero, who along his journey changes from an ordinary young man to some sort of cursed X-Men character.
These mutations fall into two basic types: Exomutations, major transformations that change the character's external physical appearance and add a new ability to his arsenal; and Endomutations, secondary mutations that act as passive abilities, conferring smaller and cumulative benefits.
Exomutations are the most important and decisive for character development as they determine your basic (and much needed) attack and defense skills beyond the limited baseball bat. Therefore, they are only acquired with the gathering of radiation — that is, by leveling up.
Each time the experience bar is filled, it is possible to receive a new power as well as to evolve a previously acquired power. There are also unique transformations for each power, which depend on certain special requirements to be enabled.
Endomutations are more common and numerous and can be acquired by interacting with Mender machines randomly hidden by the map, or through specific consumable injections. Most of them guarantee buffs such as invulnerability to a particular element or higher running speed — the most interesting, however, are those that interact with the main powers, synergistically benefiting Exomutations.
Like the terraforming aspect, mutation mechanics bring excellent complementarity between the look and the gameplay of the title. While it is very cool (and a little terrifying) to accompany our hero's gradual transformation into an inconceivable accident of nature, this never-ending visual mutation is directly reflected by the equally irreversible gameplay changes.
While the first stage of each run always brings the same restricted movement of jumps and bat attacks, each mutation brings considerable transformations that must always be taken into account, as the level of challenge forces us to make use of each and any weapons we have to our advantage as efficiently as possible.
Some mutations profoundly change the controllability of the character — after all, you didn't think you would continue to run and jump the same way after getting an inflatable bladder-balloon embedded in your head or evolving into some sort of centaur-like build, right?
In turn, the usefulness of each power is always relative to the circumstance in question, which causes the randomizing factor to guarantee tension even on the luckiest of runs. For example, developing wings may mean salvation on a particularly fragmented map, but it won't do much for a more uniform continent in the dark. Similarly, a certain power can present itself as great luck when popping up in the early transformations — just for us to be surprised by a boss who is especially resistant to it, which makes us once again dependent on the good old baseball bat.
Adapt or die
This need to constantly adapt and to try and give a shot to all the possible combinations is a very nice element that kept the experience fresh for me even in the most potentially frustrating sections. The unpredictability factor is worked simply and efficiently across each stage, and the feeling of not knowing what is coming is constant.
Of course, some patterns will be assimilated by the player as the number of attempts made increases. Being forced to experiment with the powers, items and accessories as the occasion requires, the player gets used to the game's catalog of possibilities. But as the surprise factor drops, the game's panoramic view increases, leaving us more aware of what exactly will be needed to overcome the challenge.
It was a lot of fun to realize that after a few sessions of initial confusion (and considerable panic), I was doing well on each run quite consistently, even hoping for a mutation that would be especially effective in combination with what I already had received.
The same can be said about the different levels of the game: each stage has its own pace and exploring the strategies that work best is one of the most fun elements of the experience. With its well-optimized user interface and very detailed mini-map, the adventure through hostile landscapes becomes a little less daunting — although every initial visit to an unvisited stage has caused me its fair share of panic.
Enemies are strategically scattered across the map and have fixed and well-assimilated patterns of attack and defense. While it is theoretically possible to account for everything and everyone only with the use of the faithful baseball bat (which can be exchanged for versions with special quirks later on), in practice the acquired mutations determine specific weaknesses and advantages against the hordes of monstrosities. It is very satisfying to discover a particular combination of powers and test new strategies in different contexts.
When fighting one-on-one, success depends mainly on a careful enough approach by the player. When the muties come together in larger groups, however, things start to get ugly: besides being careful, a lot of skill and some luck are required so that the situation does not degenerate quickly into imminent disaster. Different types of enemies become especially deadly when combined with each other, which becomes increasingly common as the game progresses and the narrow corridors give way to veritable chaotic and explosive battle arenas.
By the way, for those who want to take a break from the guides and venture into the dark in an experience of medium complexity, but fully self-explanatory, the game ends up being an excellent choice. All information about current powers and items is cataloged in-game in the Notebook section, and the shared experience of these notebooks is fully transcribed in the Tome of the Ancients, which serves as the inventory and general bestiary that records the (not always) essential information about the world of RAD.
Even though the gradual challenge gives the player a chance to adapt and react skillfully to the destructive wave of randomization that awaits him for Fallow, the great brilliance of RAD undoubtedly lies in the unpredictability aspect.
In this sense, the game unexpectedly reminded me a bit of ToeJam & Earl: Back in The Groove’s spirit of (tragi)comic randomness, although the difficulty of RAD is more equivalent to that of the franchise's relentless debut game than of its latest version, which at least provides the novice player with gradual difficulty options.
With that in mind, the two main caveats with which I came out of the overall very satisfying experience of RAD were precisely the pace of exploration of the game.
The first one — simpler and perhaps the result of a rather unfair comparison with ToeJam — concerns the absence of a local multiplayer mode. The formula was absolutely perfect for this: if simply watching someone play this game can be super fun in itself, what about a co-operative adventure with added challenge to spice things up even more?
The second, somewhat more significant, concerns the pacing of the loop of attempts in the game. The fact is that the initial stage of each match, usually preceding the first mutation, can be considered a bit slow and repetitive compared to the rest of the experience. As an effect, especially while still trying to get the hang of it, players may find themselves unmotivated about going through the same monotonous initial stage again. This is a sequence where very little happens and, unlike the rest of the adventure, there is a sense of padding between the comings and goings to enable the first Breathers.
As the game unfolds, fortunately, things change and the full potential of the game is revealed. However, this early stage probably lacks some element that could ensure that each new start does not suffer from a full incentive drop from the previous run. That the loading times are a little on the long side does not help much too, as this makes the impression of stagnation of this early stage further accentuated.
But don't be fooled by the somewhat truncated early stage: RAD brings a well-balanced design between challenge and rewards, which is able to encourage the player to devote hours and hours to a better outcome, amidst a storm of randomization that keeps us excited (and a little apprehensive) about the directions our mutagenic journey will take us next.
Those looking for a higher challenge will find even crueler game options — one of which even proposes finishing a run using only the baseball bat. The very idea alone has been able to give me nightmares. Thank you so much, but at least for now, I'd rather risk my genes!
✓ Pros
- Ever-changing experience: Each run is a different journey;
- Inventive and humorous atmosphere;
- Exciting, unpredictable and well-balanced challenge;
- Charismatic look, with beautiful scenery;
- Great soundtrack.
✘ Cons
- Long loading times;
- Absence of a multiplayer mode;
- Slow and somewhat truncated start of each new run can be discouraging.
