Rascal - Nitro Rad

[Music] nine throw the PlayStation was home of some of the best games ever made but it was also home of some of the worst in the early era of 3d primitive trends called for a primitive gameplay a time where tank controls are the standard and having full 3d analog control was going above and beyond but as time went on tank controls grew less and less common analog slowly became the standard and I have to reiterate on slowly survival horror games like resident evil and many adventure games like Tomb Raider all continued to use them even when something becomes standard it's still hard to transition away from it one game that didn't make the transition was rascal a platformer game developed by Traveller's Tales it came out in 1998 which was roughly around the same time that most platformer games were generally getting away from tank controls and as something that failed to evolve with the times morasco went down in history as a piece of poop I've had people try to warn me about this game claiming it's the worst thing on the console well guys I did be bubsy 3d after all and I'd highly doubt there's a game out there that could possibly be as bad as that one let alone on just the PlayStation so hey if I can get through that one I can tank through anything I mean like I could just get two hours of b-roll and then yell about how bad this game is and reaffirm everyone's popular opinions but that's not how I roll because that's just way too easy I'm gonna beat this game I'm going to digest it in its entirety I'm gonna look for maybe one or two things I think are pretty alright about it while being fair and critical at the same time so rascal you got one chance don't blow it let's pop you in Oh psygnosis published this they published a lot of travelers tales games back in the day they also made Kingsley but yeah we start up as per usual with a pre-rendered cutscene rascals roaming the halls of his father's lab when suddenly these aliens inexplicably teleport in and start giving chase after narrowly escaping them rascal finds himself in a room with his father professor Casper clockwise and this freaky alien lookin guy his name is Cronin the evil time overlord that's what the manual says that's alright that's a name he kind of looks like a reboot villain Cronan accidentally bumps a switch that warps both him and professor clockwise away leaving behind only the blaster that clockwise was inventing rascal picks up the gun and sets out to defeat Cronin and to save his professor dad scientist man this is such a goofy ass cutscene I feel it runs on a little longer than it needs to though the thing is two and a half minutes long and not a whole lot other than running happens it easily could have been cut down at least by a minute so here's the title screen I I don't know what I'm looking at there's a lot going on here we've got a moon dinosaur at night I think it's supposed to reflect the game's theme of time travel you know how every level takes place in a different setting in time and of course there's rascal are a little protagonist dude looking all cool with the backwards purple cap and the shades it kind of looks like a little she says all right let's start oh oh oh that's cool this title screen is not a 2d image that is all actually rendered in 3d and when you press start it just unfreezes it just goes like that's actually red as hell oh I see the knight in the dinosaur are toys of his superimposed in front of the camera to compose the title screen man that's okay I know this game's supposed to suck dick but like I'm not gonna lie it's left a pretty good impression so far but it's not long before I start stumbling across reasons people hate this game firstly let's talk about the controls as I've stated before it's tank controls you'll rotate rascal by pushing left and right on either the d-pad or the stick and you'll move him forward and back by pressing up and down jumping doesn't unlock him from the axis of rotation he's on when you're in the air you're still steering him like he's a car croc actually had a pretty good solution to this when you jump left and right will then move you left and right instead of turning so when you're making a jump it's you know doable but rascal doesn't get this right I mean hell even bubsy 3d did this better it makes jumping on moving platforms a damn nightmare you have to know exactly where that platform is going to be before you land on it because you can't adjust yourself once you're in the air you are locked to that direction if they really did have to stick with tank controls these problems could have been alleviated by adding rafe buttons Silent Hill made great use of strafe buttons and so did Kingsley's adventure I actually never had a problem landing on moving platforms and kingsley because of them but here there's nothing of the sort you're just stuck with the tank controls and there's nothing sprinkled on top to make them more comfortable on top of that there's the camera oh my god it's really bad there's no way to control it manually outside of using the shoulder buttons to snap it to a couple of preset angles but it seems that every single time I actually need that to rotate the camera so I can you know actually see where I'm going to go it flat-out doesn't work take this room for example there's a bunch of horses on either side of the room kicking bales of hay back and forth these are things you'll obviously have to dodge if you don't want to take damage however the camera does not look at the hay and I cannot rotate the camera to look at the hay manually either so I just have to run in that direction and pray for the best this is not an isolated incident either this is a frequently reoccurring thing there are far too many times where the camera refuses to give you the visual information you need to properly play the game I swear it just does whatever the hell it wants it's like instead of operating the camera yourself you hired a crappy intern it was no idea how to use a camera and he ended up aiming it at his balls the whole time I would say that about 65% of the time the camera will do a reasonable job by itself and that is more than half of the time but it's still not enough are these the worst controls I've ever dealt with no is this the worst camera I've ever dealt with also no but when you combine the two it makes the game very frustrating the worst level for me was the Atlantis level this sequence of platforms right here to be specific they're all moving and of course landing on moving platforms with tank controls that don't accommodate for adjusting your jumps midair that's downright unfair especially since landing in the water can quickly drain all of your health there's 10 levels total the goal in every level is to find and collect all the pieces of an hourglass and then find the portal at the end there's a big focus on exploration since you'll spend most the game looking for these things sometimes they're out in the open sometime are tucked in nooks and crannies and sometimes they'll be dropped by enemies you will deal with these freaking guys by using your bubble gun it'll just fire in a straight line in whatever direction you're facing you've got limited ammo for it but running out of ammo won't render the gun useless instead the bubbles from it will simply be a little weaker and the rate of fire will be cut in half so I guess it's kind of less like an ammunition meter and more like an efficiency meter or an energy meter the higher your energy the better the blast will be and if you run out it'll just be weaker you'll get more ammunition by finding ammo drops which are contained within these bubbles and you'll restore your health the same way by finding heart bubbles these bubbles can also be dropped by smaller enemies which can also be dealt with by using the bubble gun but it's best to use the ground pound move instead pressing the X button again in the air will slam rascal down into the ground creating a small shock wave that will take out nearby small enemies you're gonna be doing this pretty often because of how much the game just loves to relentlessly spawn these enemies into the room they literally just appear out of thin air all the time and they never stop it's especially annoying when they appear at your feet and you take damage before we can even react to it and even taking them out with a ground pound still a pain in the ass because of the third item they can drop ya other than the ammo and heart bubbles they can also drop a skull and crossbones bubble that'll have you take damage if you touch it and since they drop the bubble as soon as you take them out that means you can absolutely not ground pound on them or you're risk taking damage from this potential item drop you must do it beside them can you freaking imagine if jumping on a Goomba had a 1 in 5 chance of doing damage to you that would be ridiculous and that's what radicalize the bad camera doesn't help either you'll find yourself tripping all over these little buggers because of it and are you guys ready for the cherry on the cake there's also been plenty of times when I'll enter a room and there's an enemy right in the doorway so when the area loads in I unavoidably take damage this is inexcusably bad game design and it really disappoints me how poorly designed this game is because and hear me out on this one there's actually a lot about this game that I think is pretty alright some of the levels I actually thought kinda cool ok so firstly the 10 levels are divided into two categories there's past and present the five levels you'll run through our medieval level in Aztec level an Atlantis level a pirate ship level and a Wild West level once you finish a level you'll get a key to unlock the next part of the hub world where you'll then access the next level but revisiting a level will bring you to a present-day version of it sometimes they're similar with a twist like the medieval castle being turned into a museum or the pirate ship in Atlantis levels now being sunk in underwater having you swim through them other times they can be totally different like the ads tech level which was turned into a lumberyard but the coolest one has got to be the Wild West level you start in the familiar area except everything looks like a prop then you go through this door and it reveals that it's actually one of the sets in a film studio that's really cool and believe it or not I actually did enjoy exploring these levels I thought they were large enough to make exploring enjoyable but also focused enough to make it hard to get lost with the high level of detail rooms often look unique and memorable so it's easy to navigate and remember which rooms are which as for the water levels well I've definitely played worse the swimming controls certainly aren't great but at least they're not as bad as Crocs or bubsy 3ds one weird thing though is how it doesn't cap your vertical rotation like most games do when you swim instead you can pull the stick back and rotate all the way back around kind of weird thing to have since it can be a little disorienting if you're not aware of it and while neither of them are very good it's still a novel idea re exploring the level but this time it's all underwater now entering a level a third time will then pitch you against cronin in a boss battle none of them are very difficulty just to run around them in circles and fire at them and the shield goes down each version of the fight will just change the moves he uses starting with a fireball and throwing our glasses and then these annoying boomerang gyro thingies these are the things I always got hit by and then the final fight just has them cycling through all three of the attacks and he always does them in the exact same order so it's really easy to memorize the attacks it might take you a couple of tries because of the pad controls obviously but it's not hard to learn and overcome all right so once you've cleared all 10 levels and all five boss fights you'll then unlock the final level it's just a boss rush pitting you against five bosses all in one go each one is themed after the five worlds yeah this is kind of weird that these guys were not the bosses for each world and instead they just reduced the Cronin fight five times why did they do this it would have made more sense for a boss rush to you know actually be against bosses you've already fought before instead of brand new ones isn't the point of a boss rush to be like okay you've beaten these guys before you know their moves now can you do them all in one go if they're all brand new bosses you've never seen before doesn't that kind of defeat the point either way none of them are particularly difficult but it is really hard to do them all on one life which is exactly what I had to do because at this point of the game I had no lives left and once you finish off the levels you can't replay them this means I could not go back and grab more lives I just had to do this all in one life and there was nothing I could do about it and taking damage is going to be inevitable since you know you can't dodge things with tank controls if you're directly facing the boss when they look at you to fire you have to take the time to rotate yourself away before you can move imagine somebody aiming a gun at you when your action is this no you're not gonna wait you're screwed you're done you're dead the process for reloading your game is such a chore too you've got to load up the title screen you hit start you got to leave your room walk to the save room interact with a safe portal and you wait and wait and you load up your game I don't see why this couldn't have been done from the title screen it would at least save me the walk from Rascals room to the safe room anyway after some practice and learning an exploit that keeps the bosses from firing their projectiles I was able to tank through it I found out that the bosses can't get to you if you're hugging the circumference of the room and if you keep moving they won't get a chance to stay still and fire their weapon it was kind of an inconsistent method but it was still enough to reach the final cronin fight with still a solid chunk of health left and it's exactly the same fight as the previous five times you fought um um okay once Cronin's defeated rascal then rescues his father and they returned home credits yeah that definitely wasn't very good what I say it's the worst game on the console though god no not even close it's a game with bad controls and a bad camera and that will make the game pretty frustrating sometimes but even still there are some things I do kinda like about this game we gotta talk about that performance because oh my lord this game runs at 60fps on the PlayStation 1 that is so freakin rare at least it is for 3d games you not so much 2d games but you never see that especially not with graphics this freaking detailed the textures are all really high quality for the hardware it's on and each room is densely filled with unique objects the set decoration here is really well done there's a lot of impressive details here like the reflections on the time bubbles and the reflections on the floor and the reflections on these textures okay yes it's just reflections but man dude like I don't even know how you could have pulled some of the stuff off on the ps1 and even in the most demanding of areas rascal manages to keep a frame rate between 40 and 60 the worst that'll did to is 30 and that blows my freakin mind the back of the case claims the game has jaw-dropping 3d environments and lightning fast graphics uh yeah I'd say that's accurate before the time this was a visually impressive game oh it also says that rascal was designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop that's kind of interesting um that's the company that was originally behind the Muppets for those I don't know and they've also gone on to create animatronics and the effects were tons of movies as well but yeah this game must be hella optimized and well I wasn't surprised when I found out that the director of the game was John Burton that guy is a programming wizard he's the founder of travelers tales and he's now got his own YouTube channel called game hut there he'll break down how he achieved many of his technical feats over the years it's a really good watch I don't know if you guys remember my video on Haven I did about but yeah that game wasn't super great in a lot of areas but I could not help but to have my jaw drop to the floor at those planetary transitions so if there's anybody on planet earth that can get a game this good-looking running at 60 on the PlayStation 1 and it's John Burton that guy is an optimization genius and it honestly breaks my heart to see such a technical achievement being part of such an otherwise bad game I think there's genuine potential here I honestly think if the game had good controls a better camera and reworked enemy placement this could have been a pretty good game so here's what I think should happen I want to see rascal remastered redone with better controls camera tweak level design all that good stuff people often ask me what games I would like to see get remade and honestly I'd love to see the games that have potential bleeding through all of those gigantic cracks get remade a good game can be better but a bad game with good ideas can become something wonderful for the very first time rascal is not the worst game on the PlayStation like people exaggerate it to be it's just simply a poorly designed game with some cool ideas that weren't executed well but nevertheless I still appreciate the technical achievements and I appreciate the vision at some point in time somebody had a really good idea up in their head it's just that sometimes it doesn't come out as well as you'd hope what can you do everybody thank you for watching my video if you want to see another one on another platforming game I've got a link right here to another one and if you'd like to support the show and help me continue doing this as a full-time job you can donate a dollar a month to my patreon and get access to the night read podcast and blooper reels and some other bonus stuff but yeah thank you guys so much and I'll see you in soon

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 281,545

Keywords: nitro rad, review, rascal, rascal playstation, ps1, psone, platformer, bad game, playstation, jon burton, traveller's tales, psygnosis, tank controls, 90s, 1998, title screen that unfreezes, chronon, the evil time overlord, bad game design, good performance, well optimized, optimization, impressive ps1 game, ps1 platformer that runs at 60fps, kid with purple shirt and sunglasses, kid with a bubble gun, bubble gun, purple shirt, sunglasses, rascal ps1, rascal game

Id: N1Cvuj2qjaA

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018