Tech reviews

Rico Review: Cel-shaded shooter is hit and miss but offers plenty of bang for your buck


Rico Review: Cel-shaded shooter is hit and miss but offers plenty of bang for your buck

Rico Review: Cel-shaded shooter is hit and miss but offers plenty of bang for your buck (Pic: PH)

RICO is a first-person, breach-and-enter game developed by Bristol-based Groundshatter Studios, in which you spend your time kicking down doors and shooting whatever you find on the other side.

The game is centered entirely around that concept so if that’s not your thing, you probably won’t enjoy what RICO has to offer.

Based in the fictional city of San Amaro, you play as (one of) two detectives who, as part of the RICO unit, are tasked with bringing the city’s biggest kingpins to justice.

At least, that’s what the nice English lady who briefs you as the game boots up wants you to believe.

While the game does offer the player branching paths in the story mode, in reality, there’s little to no story involved here, but that’s okay.

The game revolves around procedural generation, meaning that no two players will experience exactly the same playthrough.

When you load the title up, missions are randomly generated – and the same goes for the environments and the bad guys you’ll be pumping full of lead, too.

The narrative does suffer because of this, but you’re not really playing this game for the story, are you?

RICO is centred entirely around the gameplay mechanics of busting down doors and shooting whatever’s behind it to bits.

While this does sound awfully repetitive, Groundshatter has added a few different mechanics to help pad out the game a bit more.

As you play each mission, you’re greeted with different objectives throughout the map. Some of these are clear-cut from the outset, such as eliminating X amount of enemies, or retrieving a set amount of evidence.

Other tasks are presented to you as you play, such as having to defuse a certain number of explosive devices within a time limit.

Completing these tasks grant the player merits at the completion of each mission, which in turn are used to upgrade your weapons, armour and health.

Spend these merits wisely however, as your health doesn’t regenerate between missions. You only have 24 hours to complete your path of missions. If you die, the entire campaign is reset, and you’re thrown back to the tutorial mission.

This is where I had the biggest issue with RICO. It drove me up the wall when I would die to a seemingly stray bullet, because I knew it meant that I’d have to start from the beginning again.

But on the other hand, I can understand the use of the mechanic – it puts actual stakes into a game where the story is frankly not important, and it spurs the player on to manage their health, refine their shooting and just improve altogether. 

“It should be easy to lose a few hours in this game”

As you progress through the game, more and more weapons and items are made available to you, which you need to purchase with the aforementioned merits.

The weapons are standard enough; you have a nice range of pistols, shotguns, submachine guns and assault rifles available to you.

Paired with these is a melee weapon in the form of a police baton, and your trusty legs. While bullets can miss if you’re imprecise, I found that the deadliest weapons in the game were your legs.

The player has the ability to slide through doors instead of kicking them down, and sliding comes with the added bonus of killing anything you come into contact with in one shot.

Add this to the slowed-down, bullet-time mechanic that plays every time a door is breached, and you have a recipe for success.

It’s incredibly powerful, albeit ridiculous, and I’m glad to say I spent more time sliding along the ground than I ever did firing a weapon.

The graphics and sound design are probably the two biggest downfalls of the game, though.

The graphics are okay, with the game adding a cel-shaded effect to its characters and the randomly generated environments you’re placed in.

However, the issue I came across is that the enemies are too repetitive. When you load up a mission, you can expect to see the same two or three character models throughout the map. 

The sound design is another story. The only music found in this game is played on the main menu.

Having no music play during missions might add to the realism, but RICO knowingly departs from realism in other aspects of the game, so this shouldn’t be any exception.

The lack of music, or even an option to modify or mute music during missions is jarring, and thus footsteps sound extra heavy. Likewise, the weapons sounded a bit dull and lacking punch, almost as if they were being muffled or muted.

Bar the questionable sound design, I enjoyed my time with RICO.

The developers went for replayability over narrative, which is understandable given the size of the game.

With the options to jump into a case quickly, delve into the branching “story”, or complete daily missions that are randomly generated every 24 hours put before you, it should be easy to lose a few hours in this game.

While I had definitely had some issues with the game – sound design, the hard reset on failure – I still found myself coming back to play more.

Turn up your favourite high-octane rock music, and get ready to lose a couple of hours in this mindlessly fun shoot-em-up. 

The Verdict – 3/5

The Good 

  • Fun and engaging gameplay
  • High replayability
  • The slow-motion/bullet-time mechanic doesn’t get old

The Bad

  • Iffy sound design
  • Lack of music
  • Those hard resets should be optional 



READ SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.