R.I.P.D. The Game

This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Crappy Games Wiki.

R.I.P.D. The Game
Even if the film sucked, you're still better off watching the film rather than playing this game. Let's hope this game does not rest in peace.
Genre(s): Third-person shooter Rating(s): ESRB: T PEGI: 16 Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 Release Date: NA: July 17, 2013 EU: July 31, 2013 Engine: Saber3D Engine Developer(s): Old School Games Publisher(s): Atlus USA Country: United States Series: Rest in Peace Department

R.I.P.D. The Game (full name: R.I.P.D.: Rest in Peace Department - The Game) is a 2013 co-op third-person shooter game developed by Old School Games and published by Atlus USA for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on July 17, 2013. It is based on the eponymous movie, which was released earlier the same year. The gameplay is derived from Old School Games' previous game, God Mode. Players in R.I.P.D. The Game are able to play as Roy Pulsipher or Nick Walker in a cooperative horde mode gametype against renegade ghosts also known as "deadoes", who stay on earth to avoid their fate in the afterlife.

Plot

R.I.P.D. The Game summarizes the events of the movie, covering Nick Walker's death, to his arrival at the afterlife law enforcement agency, the R.I.P.D. The stylized comic also introduces Nick Walker's partner, Roy Pulsipher, a nineteenth-century law enforcer who also works for the R.I.P.D. The introductory comic also informs the player of motives of the monsters, referred to as "deadoes", and depicts them stealing gold artifacts but leaves their ulterior motives a mystery. However, this is the only cutscene, and the game immediately drops the player in a tutorial afterwards.

Gameplay

R.I.P.D. The Game is a third-person shooter that has players gunning down monsters called "deadoes", in a horde mode with one other player cooperatively across online matchmaking. There are seven maps for each of the seven missions and a final boss at the end of each one. Matches are composed of five rounds with each round increasing in difficulty compared to the last. Players are able to buy and upgrade weapons using in game currency. These weapons include a standard arsenal of shotguns, assault rifles, and references to the movie such as a banana or a hairdryer. Enemies can be defeated through in game firearms or by standing next to marked enemies in order to arrest them. At the end of each level, bounties are collected from surviving all five waves of enemies. The game also provides challenges for the player to complete to earn more points at the end of a match. One of the game's unique features is betting, which allows the player to bet in game currency on who will get the most points at the end of a match. The player's main way of interacting with the world is through shooting or grenades to defeat enemies, however some enemies may be marked for arrest which is done by standing near the marked enemy for the specified time limit. At the end of each round, players may buy new weapons or upgrades for existing ones. Achievements can be earned through in-game actions, which include references to the movie.

Why This Game Should Not Rest in Peace

1. The game has virtually no story to keep the player interested. There is a total of one cutscene, that being the opening, in the whole game, and from that point on, all the player can do is to play a match in one of eight very repetitive and generic maps over and over. While there are some challenges, they offer too little variety to break up the monotony, meaning that the game will become boring very, very soon.
2. Even if one were to look past the nonexistent story, the game is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill online zombie killing shooter, released at a time where said genre started becoming oversaturated, making the game feel lazy.
3. Most core gameplay mechanics are a rip-off of other, more popular franchises. The only game mode available is a variation on the Zombie mode from the Call of Duty franchise, while the gunplay is copied from Gears of War, complete with a cover system, and the zombie AI is the stock AI used in most zombie games released at the time.
4. Opening the main menu doesn't pause the game. While this is common in most online games, this happens even if you're playing in single player due to the game being designed around cooperative gameplay.
5. Making a game based on R.I.P.D. was a questionable idea in the first place, since the feature film that this game was supposed to tie into was a failure, and even before that, the comic book series that had inspired the movie wasn't very well known to begin with.
6. The game is horribly optimized on PCs. Even after turning the settings all the way down to the lowest option, the game will still struggle to maintain a consistent frame rate and manifest a very noticeable lag during firefights, which can be annoying, especially when playing online.
7. To add insult to injury, the graphics are horrible and look like they came out of a PlayStation 2 or GameCube game, meaning that the game should have no issues running.
8. As stated in WTGSNRIP#1, the game does offer some challenges, though they are all very basic and boil down to killing a certain number of enemies under certain conditions, meaning that they get very repetitive rather soon and don't offer enough variety to keep the player interested.
9. The game makes heavy use of artificial difficulty. The enemies are bullet sponges and are capable of resisting several shots before going down, however, their AI is extremely dumb, and causes them to march in a straight line towards you, exposing themselves to gunfire, with no attempt to make use of more advanced strategies like retreating when they are close to death, flanking the player, or ambush him.
   • This could be explained by the fact that the game was designed around cooperative gameplay, and it was supposed to reward cooperation between players.
10. The bosses are just regular enemies with more strength and health, which makes boss battles a chore to sit through.
11. The game is actually a reskin of Saber Interactive's previous game, God Mode, as the two games share the same engine and gameplay style.
12. After defeating a boss, you have the choice of either killing or arresting him. However, this choice ultimately makes no sense, as it has no visible outcomes on the gameplay.
13. The game had no physical release and was delisted from digital storefronts sometime after its release and poor reception, meaning that there is no way to play the game without resorting to piracy, not that you'd want to play such a lazily made game anyway.

Reception

R.I.P.D. The Game received negative reviews. The game holds an average of 39% and 42% on aggregate websites Metacritic and GameRankings. The majority of complaints about R.I.P.D. The Game are its lack of story, repetitive mechanics, and its similarity to Old School Game's previous entry God Mode.

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