Megaton Rainfall Switch Review by SwitchWatch
Developer: Pentadimensional Games
Publisher: Pentadimensional Games
Release Date: Out Now
Price as of Article: $14.99 USD, £11.99 GBP
The game code provided by Pentadimensional Games for review
The story here is one we have seen before. It’s your job to save planet earth from an alien invasion. It can only be you seeing as you are an indestructible super-being. Much of the story is narrated to you and it’s kept pretty simple but I appreciated that time was taken to implement one.
As soon as the game loads up you are presented with a small tutorial where you learn how to fly and straight off you can see this is going to be enjoyable as the controls are nice and simple. The left stick propels you and the right moves you around. The L and R buttons move your being up and down and can be used to build up speed. You realise that you can fly around at super speeds and the feeling of the game grabbed me pretty much right away. I have never felt so powerful in a game before. You get to fly around at speeds that would make Superman jealous. You can fly around planet Earth and you can even fly through the atmosphere into space and back again. Using the atmosphere to pick up great speeds and you can even pay a visit to the fish in the ocean. It feels fantastic and the game is beautiful at times especially in the first person perspective. It feels like you are the biggest baddest superpower in the world capable of anything, but can you save humanity?
Its these first few hours the game makes you feel like this is an experience unlike any other and we will get into the game’s shortcomings but I feel like I should make clear that as a game this is not a complete success but as an experience I can certainly recommend it just because of how great it feels. On the Switch, movement feels really smooth for the most part which I was glad about.
As you are indestructible in the game you can’t die so you have to save the city from being destroyed by aliens and sometimes by yourself! As people perish your job becomes more difficult.The more people perish the more you get punished in the game as your green bar on the left starts to drain. If the bar drains completely you have to restart at the games last checkpoint and these are never too far from each other which his fine by me. You have to make your way from point to point destroying foes as quickly as possible before moving onto the next and it’s really quite stressful having the city all in your hands. Who would want this as a job!? Enemies are nice and varied which was quite a surprise, some are small and nimble, others are big and slow but can cause massive damage and kill lots of people with some of their mega weapons reminding me of when the ship in Independence Day unleashed a ton of energy and taking out a whole city. It’s a balancing act of choosing which enemies to take down first and many have weak points depicted by a red spot somewhere on them. The gameplay for a lot of the game feels really fun but there are some frustrations.
The issues with the gameplay itself come in the destruction of the enemies you face. You see, it’s not easy to target them as there is no locking system, furthermore, the targets look pretty small and move at speed making it a bloody nightmare to take some of them down especially having to target certain red spots and that can be rather annoying. Of course though, the more you play the more you will become used to the mechanics and as you complete each section you get more power ups. Freezing smaller enemies comes in very handy indeed later on and does alleviate some of the earlier annoyances.
This is certainly a game you will want to play on the larger screen. To take down enemies you release a bundle of energy from your hand miss though and you can end up doing more damage than good. Not only does the city have to worry about the aliens but also you as the player as more often than not you will be destroying things accidentally which is wickedly good fun but really doesn’t help your cause. ZR is used to fire but holding it unleashes more energy and if one of these goes array you can destroy a city on your own and that’s time to restart from the checkpoint.
The campaign is not the longest in the world but it serves a purpose to transport you through the little story that there is but over time the game just becomes a little repetitive. Once that initial “Wow!” comes out of your mouth at how great the game feels to play and fly around destroying enemies it can never manage to sustain those heights which is a real shame, however, seeing as this was developed by one guy I was more than just a little impressed what has been accomplished here. For what there was to play I did enjoy it. I just wish there had been a little more variety. To it’s credit the enemies are quite varied and present a differing challenge to kill each one. There are bosses but none of them are really too difficult.
The game has a VR option on the PS4 and I have to say I think the experience must be great in VR and is certainly one I would want to try.
The audio sounds great! The explosions are fantastic and the sounds made when you fly just make you feel really immersed into the game. The star though for me is the expressive music tracks chosen, I really enjoyed the tracks here, while you’re in the heat of battle and all of a sudden you here some quality vocals. Just some great stuff here.
Visually the game is very good but the textures do lack detail but it can be forgiven with the speeds you’re capable of flying at. Buildings crumble, floating on top of a planet and seeing the sunlight come through is a delight and I enjoyed messing around flying at my own leisure. The Switch handles all of this brilliantly with no obvious performance issues either in docked or handheld mode although I would say this is best played on the larger screen just so you can see those targets a little easier. I liked the design of the enemies reminding me of War of the Worlds.
The game is $15.99 and to be fair while you will get a good few hours out of this and maybe not a lot more I think it’s worth it for the experience and the game is actually a good game. You can unlock both score attack and free mode which adds a little bit more replay value. Sometimes games just have to be appreciated for the experience they give you and like a film, you may watch it once, be fully satisfied and move on. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the experience gives you something that you enjoyed. Sure this becomes a little repetitive after a while but it was still breathtaking for the first few hours and was the first game that made me really feel supremely powerful in a way I have not quite felt before and for that, in my opinion, it’s worth the cash.
Pros
Feels great to fly
Beautiful Visuals
Great soundtrack
Cons
Repetitive quite quickly
Tough to shoot smaller moving targets due to lack of targeting systems
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