Rampage: Total Destruction review

Check your brain at the door and everything's just fine

12DOVE Verdict

Pros

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    Self-explanatory gaming

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    Some satisfying destruction

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    It's only 20 bucks

Cons

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    Crap controls

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    Punch

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    punch

  • -

    punch...

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    PS2 only supports two players

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You're a pudgy, kinda-gargantuan monster that walks around city streets and slowly razes the bustling metropolis to the ground. There you go. Practically everyone on the planet knows what's going on with Rampage: Total Destruction before they even fire it up. With this in mind, there's definitely some guilty, people-munching fun to be had here - and for less than 20 bucks.

You begin with a handful of the towering beasts, but by tearing through locales like New York, London and San Francisco, more than 25 creatures can be unlocked. It really doesn’t matter if you're an oversized nautilus or an angry cyclops, as each monster handles about the same. Yeah, some may scale the buildings a little quicker, but it's more a matter of preference than anything else.

Total Destruction tries to make the mindless button mashing a little more interesting by giving you goals to accomplish in each wave of new buildings. Eat five bikers, learn a new move. Smash a few cable cars and now you can do a roar attack. Each monster can level up in this way, but again, it all amounts to pounding the square button.

The game's morbid sense of humor can add a little something to the mix, if you think violently shaking a bus to spill delicious people into your mouth is funny. It's also pretty cool when you bust down buildings like a kite store, and multicolored kites spray out like a broken artery.

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionThe ultimate game for short attention spans, Rampage returns in Total Destruction. Smash, crush, destroy!
Platform"PS2","Wii","GameCube"
US censor rating"Rating Pending","Rating Pending","Rating Pending"
UK censor rating"","",""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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CATEGORIES
Brett Elston

A fomer Executive Editor at GamesRadar, Brett also contributed content to many other Future gaming publications including Nintendo Power, PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazine. Brett has worked at Capcom in several senior roles, is an experienced podcaster, and now works as a Senior Manager of Content Communications at PlayStation SIE.