One thing people in the games industry tend to take as a given is that film-licensed games generally suck. The problem is, this something of a sweeping generalisation, as the majority of the games are quite good - especially when you give them to the target audience of smaller children who've enjoyed the film. Yes, they have flaws - WALL-E moves to fast, Megamind's poor implementation of co-op and the shortness of Surf's Up - but for the price you can normally find them for, they're pretty enjoyable distractions that have given me more fun than several big budget games I can name. Some games, even with film tie-ins stand out amongst the others as bastions of brilliance - Kung Fu Panda is awesome, Toy Story 3 is very good, and now Rango. They say things come in threes.
Rango takes place after the events of the film, and follows the story of the chameleon sheriff of the town of Dirt. But the town is in trouble - Bad Bill is up to no good again (who'd have thought it with a name like that?) and fragments of an odd, glowing-green, metallic rock are cropping up all over the place. Somewhere along the line, a female lizard called Beans that Rango seems quite keen on gets kidnapped - the mystery being that she vanished while searching for evidence of her parents' disappearance, which also seems to be linked to the glowing rocks... Luckily for the residents of Dirt, Rango - or rather, you - are on the case.
Rango follows the traditional film-tie in format of a platformer, theming its levels around locations that look like they might have been in the film, that have been sprinkled with enemies to brawl with, and collectables to, well, collect. It's a well-trodden path, but it's also a formula that works. Rango even mixes it up a bit, with Sonic-inspired rail grinding sections, where you slide down a rail, and have to jump over and duck under various obstacles, along with bullet-time sequence, where you direct a golden bullet to a target. There's also a couple of 'vehicle' levels, which see you riding on the back of a road-runner, bat or piloting a UFO, avoiding the cacti that just happen to fall in your path as you drive past, shooting at various enemies as you go. Things get weirder still with levels that let you show off your golfing skills by putting explosive balls at a crazy alien-obsessed man, or a hoard of zombies, while the penultimate level is a textbook in kids film weirdness, as you ride on a wind-up, flying fish through a desert of neon cacti and giant floating dartboards, after battling pixelated enemies inside an old arcade machine.
This is not normal. But on Rango it is.
Rango also has more than enough tricks up his sleeves when it comes to combat too - the X button does a basic punching attack, while RT shoots his gun, the B button will roll out the way, and the A button jumps. You can combine these to make fancier moves - for example, pressing B followed by X will have Rango roll into an uppercut, sending the enemies flying up in the air, where you can shoot at them with your gun. Jumping up in the air with A and then pressing X will have Rango slam into the floor, knocking the enemies in the surrounding area over. Or, you could just alternate between hammering X and the RT, like I did. Dispatching enemies earns you Sheriff Stars, the game's currency, which can be spent on various upgrades for Rango - like increasing his health, the number of Sheriff Stars you gain defeating the bad guys, or the amount of ammo in his gun.
One of Rango's strong points is it's humour and general quirky-ness - most of the story is told through tales in an old western bar to a crowd of onlookers. And as with all the best storytellers, Rango has a tendency to exaggerate and embellish his stories - one "highly-perceptive" possum-type creature tends to correct him, and you see the scenery in the cut-scene change before your eyes as Rango hastily changes his story - so the canyon Rango initially describes descends into the desert sands, and large skeletons and bones drop in from above, when he's told a gang's hide-out is in the bone yard of skeleton creek, rather than the canyon of the badlands. And Rango himself is a walking western cliché of the reptilian variety - his dialogue would feel right at home in one of those spaghetti western films where "the goin' was mighty rough" in "them there days". And you'll be serenaded by a Mexican band of owls at regular points throughout the levels, too.
A big part of these sort of games are the collectables - in Rango, you'll be on the lookout for mining spots (silvery-grey mounds of rocks that you can mine Sheriff Stars from with a press of the Y button) and fish bowls containing the absent-looking Mr. Timms. Each level has a certain number of these to locate, and when you find them all they unlock character biographies and concept art in the Extras menu of the game.
Now for a relaxing game of golf...
The major downside to Rango is it's length - it only has nine levels, each of which is about half an hour long, so even taking into account going back to find the remaining Mr. Timms and mining spots, it's only about five hours in length. Considering it's RRP of £29.99, it seems like a bit of a rip-off - although it has dropped to about half that price now, making it seem much more reasonable. Seeing as children have an extraordinary ability to play and watch the same thing over and over, it may well keep them occupied for longer - it's certainly keeping us busy.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
