Rush’N Attack Ex-Patriot Review

**Smore ninja** · April 16th, 2011

Rush’N Attack, which when said quickly sounds like Russian Attack, is a game Published by Konami and developed by Vatra Games. It is set in the year is 2012 and you are a member of an elite team called “One sneaky bunch of ninja badasses.” This team gets captured at the start of their mission while infiltrating a Russian Military base that didn’t get the memo that the Cold War is over and the year is now 2012. After getting captured, another inmate casually walks by, throws a knife towards you and breaks you free. You start your mission to break your ‘mates free and continue your original mission to assassinate a Russian General who completely ignored the previously mentioned Memo that the Cold War is over. I played the entire game on regular difficulty then I played a level on the hardest difficulty and the changes between the two is that enemies deal more damage and can receive more damage before dying. I had not played the first Rush’N Attack game, but after beating Ex-Patriot I decided to give the trial version of the original game a try. One thing was clearly apparent; Ex-Patriot is not a simple HD remake of the original, but could be considered its own original game with some elements brought over.

Rush’N Attack Ex-Patriot plays like an adventure game similar to the classic Metroid games or Shadow Complex. You move around the level and fight the enemies that you stumble upon while attempting to complete the task you need to accomplish to progress the story. The controls are simple and for the most part work really well. You use the left thumbstick to move, press A to jump, X and Y are your two attack buttons while the Left trigger has you block melee attacks. The Right Trigger is used to throw grenades and the D-pad allows you to use your support items. The game features a sneaking mechanic and in order to sneak around you have to crouch by moving the left thumbstick down. Overall the controls work and nothing seems out of place with the only exception being that in order to sneak you need to crouch and if you are sneaking behind someone and they are past a ladder then your character will climb down the ladder. This has proved to be a nuisance at times, but ultimately manageable. There’s one control that I think Rush’N Attack has missed out on. If you are on a ledge and you slowly move off it, your character will not do a quick turn around and grab the ledge but will instead fall off of it. The core game itself is rather mediocre. The story is spread across three levels where you have to accomplish a task or two and then navigate through each level. You will also find that at the end of every level, there will be a boss fight. With a scoring system that gives you points based on certain actions, you will also be graded at the end of each level you on your score from D to S, where D is the lowest and S is the highest rank.

The stealth portion of the game is fun but entirely optional. There are no portions of the game where being caught would force a game over, and the worse case for breaking stealth is to be caught by a security camera and call in a wave of enemies. The only reward you get for killing enemies in a stealthy manner is that you get more points added to your score. There are areas in the level where if you move the left thumbstick up or down you will enter a hiding spot; be it a hole in the ground, missing ceiling tiles or a dark closet and if an enemy would walk in front of you, you can attack them for an instant kill. Should the enemy be taking their sweet time you can whistle them over and they will joyfully run towards your hiding spot then stop and slowly walk past it. For the first dozen times this was greatly satisfying but you can do this so often that it loses its charm and not only that, it can easily be exploited during combat. I would intentionally set off an alarm and then hide in the nearest closet and wait for enemies to run up to me one by one. Sometimes one would spot me and throw me out of the closet, but I could instantly reenter and be able to get the one hit ‘stealth’ kill. I can’t help but shake the feeling that some of the stealth mechanics are broken. One thing that really bothered me was if you slowly fell off a ledge and fall straight down and land near an enemy they will instantly be aware of your location no matter how little you move after landing. There is a certain minimum distance where you can land without being detected, but that distance seems to change at random to the point where if an enemy is below me, I’ll just get ready for combat.

The combat is good where you start off with two different types of attacks; a short quick strike and a slow but stronger attack, and as you kill more enemies you can unlock combos which use variations of pressing X and Y where some of these combos depend on whether you are moving or standing still. After a while though, I picked up two combos that you get rather early and just stuck with them. The first one I use is what I like to call “Press X until you are dead” while the second one is a moving combo which I named “Stab and throw” where the body physics are rather enjoyable to see and most of the time when I use Stab and Throw I will throw the enemy off a ledge, into a wall or into water, which always is conveniently radioactive or just too cold to support any form of life. Watching that happen is still something I find enjoyable. There are several weapons and support items for you to use. The weapons are simply power ups that you temporary have with a certain amount of ammo before you drop it. I noticed that using weapons makes running through levels somewhat quicker. The support items are all mapped to the d-pad with the exception of the grenades, which is mapped to your right-trigger. The Health Kit obviously restores lost health, and Body Armor temporary extends your life. Night Vision is pointless because the dark portions of the map are still bright enough to navigate and the only purpose for Night Vision is to give the entire level a green hue. The Gas mask is only useful for areas of the map that are covered in poison gas, normally these areas are shortcuts, and the gas mask will obscure your vision which makes these shortcuts have some added pressure making them more fun to navigate. There is also a collectable item called Ulyssium, which is vital to the game’s story. Collecting Ulyssium permanently extends your health bar. Collecting all of them rewards you with an achievement.

The platforming element of the game is either fun or annoying depending on what axis you are traversing. The horizontal platforming consists of you jumping over boxes suspended on water. Water still conveniently irradiated or freezing cold. With only three jump distances: Straight up, far, and not as far but still far. This made the platforming not only challenging, but really annoying. Unless you know the exact spot where to start your jump, you will overshoot even with the ‘not as far but still far’ jump. While I have a feeling that the ‘not as far but still far’ jump is entirely accidental, I discovered it as a knee-jerk reaction of anticipating me overshooting a jump and moving the left thumbstick in the opposite direction of jumping. Sometimes the horizontal platforming will throw a curveball and end their series of jumps with having to grab a ledge. The game seems to be rather picky when deciding if your character could grab that ledge or send you to a premature death. The vertical platforming on the other hand is rather fun, while the horizontal platforming is entirely jumping across boxes and on the odd case the final jump will be to a ledge, the vertical platforming is a series of wall jumping and wall-scurrying. It is fast and a simple, but an enjoyable break from sneaking around and stabbing anything that isn’t you. Fortunately the vertical platforming is more commonplace than the horizontal platforming, even if it is simply a single wall jump to get to a platform that was out of reach from the standard straight up jump and in more cases than once, I would opt to wall jump instead of a simple jump to grab the ledge and climb.

The game presents itself rather poorly. While the graphics are rather good the music is… in all honesty, I can’t even recall if Rush’N Attack had any music aside from what is played in the intro/outro cutscenes which are both enjoyable animations. But, all other cutscenes are used with in-game graphics which consists of two people staring at each other while text bubbles appear for all the dialogue. Rush’N Attack handles its tutorial terribly. There have been several cases where I accidently discover a control scheme and after doing it three times I’ll receive the tutorial tool tip or for the game’s power-ups I didn’t even notice I had then until I wanted to use my tried and true “Press X until you are dead” and noticed that I shot someone with an assault rifle I suddenly had in my hands. When I was talking about support items previously, I had intentionally skipped mentioning one item and that is the ‘automatic turret.’ All I know is that I picked it up once or twice with a tool-tip telling me that I have picked up an automatic turret each time, but I still have yet to discover how to deploy the turret. The difficulty of the game is really easy, where most of my deaths were platforming errors. The boss fights were alright, but one of them didn’t feel much like a boss fight, but more like a platforming challenge. While another boss fight has a platforming challenge incorporated into it, you still directly attack the boss, but for the boss that was firstly mentioned you never touch him.

Overall the game has several aspects that are nicely done, but it gets repetitive rather quickly and it has been jumbled up with design flaws. It has a story that would only make sense if most of the major antagonists completely ignored the fact that the Cold War is over, which seems to be the case since one of the last cutscenes has the Russian General you were sent to assassinate threatening the President of Russia to give him control of Russia. There is still enough to warrant a try and maintain a positive, but low, review score; but this game is one you won’t be rush’n to buy.

Final score:
6/10

**Start a Riot** · April 16th, 2011

I love how detailed this review is, good job on the write-up Smore. I know the game didn't get the highest rating, but I'm going to make sure to download the demo and give it a go.