I stopped watching Rick and Morty after season 3, which was a pretty shit season overall with only a few high points. I know basically nothing else about Justin Roiland’s other work, and have not played any of his previous games. But this one looked pretty cool, I liked some of the ideas I was seeing here. So I picked it up!

Well, let’s see if the game with the Morty gun is any good!

Developer and Publisher: Squanch Games
Release date: December 12th, 2022
Platforms: PC, Xbone, Xbox X/S (PC version reviewed)
Genre: Doomlike

Review

You play as a fairly non-descript human of whatever race or gender you want (though the game ignores your gender in dialogue… also your race doesn’t change the race of your parents and sister, so you’re adopted lol). You’re essentially not a character beyond being someone who shoots what you’re told to. On a fairly normal day after taking a sniff of cocaine, humanity is attacked by aliens out of nowhere. They end up being the G3, a massive space criminal organization, that found out that humans can be used as drugs, and they capture all of them. You find a gun-shaped alien called Kenny, who helps you run away to some alien planet by teleporting your house to it. There you find Gene, a retired bounty hunter who gives you his old bounty hunter suit (no idea how he fit in that helmet considering the 3 protruding eyes, but whatever, this is Justin Roiland, not a thoughtful writer), and you go out with Kenny to bounty hunt the big G3 members, find more gun aliens… and that’s about it. Kenny has a bit of a backstory to him, you see the relationship between your sister and some aliens progress… and that’s really about it. Not a bad story per say, but it’s a bit empty.

A big focus in the writing, rather than story, is the comedy. And, it being Justin Roiland, you know pretty much exactly what you’re getting. Mostly unfunny quips, a lot of “oh hey this is a reference to this thing” kinda lines, characters stuttering and being awkward in place of being funny, characters being rude, characters pointing out the obvious thing about themselves (like the guy with the broken leg reminding you that his leg is broken whenever you pass by him), characters saying something ridiculous followed by “yeah I said that and I’ll do it”, things being named random jumbles of letters because that’s funny…  This brand of comedy is basically throwing shit at a wall and hoping any amount of it sticks. And there’s a few times where it actually does stick, one of those, for me, being the tutorial. I’m not gonna spoil it, but it’s the kind of situation where the Roiland brand of humor actually works really well, it was a really well done intro. One of the best tutorials since Far Cry Blood Dragon. Overall, the game isn’t super funny to me, but mileage may vary. I will say this is one of the few instances where I find voice acting to be an somewhat important part of the experience. It wouldn’t be quite the same game without Justin Roiland’s kinda shit delivery that his work is known for (I will note I actually like his Morty voice and the shittyness of it).

The one thing I can talk about quickly is how much the guns talk. It’s quite a bit, but actually not too annoying, it usually makes sense, though sometimes conversations get cut off as you’re walking around…  I think they wanted you to stop to listen to conversations, which is weird. Sometimes they talk to each other, sometimes discussing random lore with you and such. It’s fine. But one thing that IS annoying is how much they complain about you running. If you run for more than 5 seconds, your currently-used gun will start whining that you’re running. I don’t get it. It’s a core mechanic of the game because running MAKES YOU MOVE FASTER. Stop it.

I know I don’t talk about graphics a lot in games recently, but I do want to highlight them here because… this game actually looks extremely good. If I’d have any issues, it would be the animation/overall look of the humans, but there’s not a lot of them so… eh. Because this takes place on alien planets, it allows for fun character designs alongside the boring humans. The alien planets look great, have a lot of nice colorful areas, with some unique aspects on every planet. Then even something as simple as the texture of some of the aliens really capturing the feel they were going for… I really enjoyed looking at this game.

And a quick note about performance… DLSS/FSR would be nice. Turning down a few settings like anti-aliasing but largely playing on highest settings, at 1440p I was getting ~160-200 FPS, sometimes depending on the area in the game it would go a bit lower. That’s not bad framerate by any means with a 3080, but I  kinda feel I could get more out of it. Like, with DLSS, even on Quality settings, I’d probably gain a good 20fps, bringing it above the 165Hz of my monitor at all times, and that would be ideal.

So this is an FPS game, with what is fairly classical gameplay. Center screen on what you want dead, press button, kill it. It’s pretty linear in progression but has some exploration to find extra shit, so it really is a Doom/Quake/Duke3D-like.

What separates this from other FPS, mostly, is the weapon selection. Kenny is a fairly standard pistol with iron sights (flesh sights?), but he also has a special shot called the glob, which is an explosive projectile that deals damage and sends enemies flying in the air which makes them vulnerable for a bit. Then you have Knifey… he’s a knife, also with a tether whip thing for some platforming segments… he’s just a knife, he does knife things. Not the most useful but stunning bosses can get them in a state where a knife hit will deal more damage. Gus is a short-range shotgun type weapon, but aiming with it turns him into a vacuum that can draw in smaller enemies, and his special is a sawblade that both serves as a weapon (that boomerangs back to you and you can hit it back to hit more enemies) and can be used to set platform on certain red-glowing walls. Sweezy is a fully-automatic pistol that shoots crystals that can remotely be exploded. Aiming with her does a kind of stronger sniper show that blows up all crystals stuck to the target, and her super shot generates a globe where anything inside it is time stopped. And finally Creature gives birth to these small alien dudes that die a few seconds after being out of the womb. Those can run around, latch on to enemies deal damage over time. His aim does nothing special, but his super shoots out a differently-colored baby that mind-controls its target for a little bit. So these weapons are all pretty fun. Mostly I used Kenny, but all of them have something interesting to offer.

The weapons also have functions outside of battle. Namely, Kenny can blow away certain barriers or rotating steel things, Knifey has his tether thing, Gus can make his sawblade platforms (which you can tether to as well), Sweezy can slow down environmental things to use them as platforms, and Creature has specific holes he can shoot his offspring into, where they’ll automatically hit switches you can’t reach or whatever (Creature’s function is basically shit from a gameplay design standpoint, pretty much a “you can’t open this door unless you have this” thing, a bit blah).

But you have a few things of your own, since you’re wearing Gene’s bounty hunter suit. You can crouch, slide, move around, dodge dash, you quickly get a jetpack so you can hover around a bit and jump higher/further distances, and you have a scanner you can use to find pickups and get a marker for your next objective. Your moveset isn’t super in-depth, but you do have pretty good movement overall.

The game flow is fairly simple. You have a hub world (which does link to it’s own traditional level as well), which has a few NPCs, a shop and your house which was teleported from Earth. In your house you can accept a bounty which will open up a teleporter to the planet they’re on. You can explore the town to find chests, which generally have money, buy stuff and… fuck around, I guess. There’s plenty of optional conversations and stuff. And alien cum to buy. You NEED that alien cum.

Once you’re on a planet, while the progression is linear, there’s still plenty to do. Namely, finding chests, fighting enemies, stealing their warp crystals. Chests can be found from your radar if you’re close to them (big blue bar appears). Using the scanner lets you know where you’re supposed to go next, but searching around is always fun. Sometimes there’s even shops in the environment which may have good stuff. You may have puzzles to solve using  your guns’ special shots, or platforming challenges and stuff, either for chests or for progress, eventually leading to a boss battle, some of which get you a new gun. Also you can revisit planets to find more hidden chests, and there’s a few spots where you can warp in different things if you buy the warp discs.

Shops sell a few things. There’s updates that apply to specific guns (such as extra ammo or damage and such), there’s mods for guns (which either improve the normal or special shot, or change how they act a little bit), and there’s a few upgrades for the bounty hunter suit, namely HP, jetpack speed and height improvements, and a sliding tackle move that I never really figured out how to use. This stuff is why you want to find chests, because more money means you can buy more stuff and get a bit stronger.

One thing I think could’ve been slightly improved is the enemy variety. While fighting is fun and fast-paced and stuff, I feel like a lot of the combat feels pretty similar because most battles focus on 2 enemy types. There’s these little dudes with a huge eye protruding out, they’re a simple headshot. There’s these goopy yellow guys with goofy faces, but the goop ends up being armor (and a bunch of other enemies have goopy armor) and the actual alien is a kinda generic grey one… with goofy faces. There’s more enemies, but these 2 types are the ones that are all over the place (and sometimes these 2 are replaced by different-colored ants, which are the same thing functionally). Sometimes there’s red melee enemies, cybernetic ones that take a shitload of damage and have a few cool abilities, very rarely there’s snipers, and big yellow guys that are big. There’s a few really minor enemies that are hardly worth mentioning like some small blue things that jump at you that die in one hit, and sometimes drones… but there’s a bit too much focus on the first 2 types you encounter. Maybe having more unique enemies on different planets would be nice, you know. So combat, fun, but more enemies would help.

The final level is shit, though the final boss is fine. The game basically gives you a rechargeable BFG, so you just walk forward wrecking everything without effort… kinda dumb.

Actually, all the bosses are pretty fun. They’re very… video game-y. They have patterns and safe times to hit them and such, with a lot of large AOE attacks to avoid and/or environmental stuff happening and stuff. All pretty well designed. They have a decent amount of health, but thy don’t feel bullet spongy.Good shit.

Oh and glitches. I actually got a few here. I managed to get out of bounds in the forest planet by jumping up on a rock that had no collision and falling through the map. I did get to a solid point that happened to have sludge next to it so I thought I’d reload to the top if I jumped in the sludge, but nope, my respawn checkpoint was in the out-of-bounds. Then I figured I’d jump out of the map entirely… didn’t help. My health dropped to 1 at some point, but I didn’t die and just kept falling infinitely. Thankfully restarting the game brought me back to safety. Another glitch I got is that Krubis, the drill head boss dude, actually spawned inside a wall outside of the battle arena… Well that’s that, can’t hit an enemy that’s out of the arena. Had to reload. Then there’s a few more visual things like dead enemies kinda frequently remaining midair (actually Krubis being one of those), or characters sitting on chairs sitting in the air if you do something that moves the chair because those have physics (not really a glitch, more of an oversight). And there’s a part where I think I was meant to wait for a conversation, but I just did what I was meant to do as far as progressing the game during the conversation which led to the NPC I was talking to dying, but the conversation continued and the model of the alien was not sure what to do so it switched randomly from standing, slouching and being dead as he was talking and it would react weirdly to me moving around it. Strange!

There’s other issues I had, such as dying frequently leading to the game crashing, especially in the late game. That’s pretty annoying.

Overall

I actually liked this a bunch.

The humor… it didn’t really work most of the time, but it had good moments. The gameplay though, pretty much mostly worked really well. This is something of a more traditional FPS which kinda surprised me, it harkens back to when FPS had more… designed single-player experiences with fairly straightforward progression. I’d say this is very much akin to Duke Nukem 3D.

I don’t have too many huge complaints about this game. More planets would be nice, more bounties would be cool, maybe an extra gun or two, maybe a bit more enemy variety… But what we do have here is great so… eh.

I’ll give this one a pretty solid recommendation. If you like the Rick and Morty brand of humor obviously this is a must, of course.