Megaton Rainfall is a first person superhero game by Pentadimensional Games who are an indie studio based in Madrid, Spain. Designed and programmed by Alfonso del Cerro over the last 5 years, Megaton Rainfall boasts an “unprecedented freedom of movement” and “unprecedented scale of destruction” as you get to battle an alien invasion across planet earth. Initially released exclusively for PS4/PSVR and due out via Steam late November, just how is a game of this size going to play out?
Gameplay
Ok, so imagine films such as Independence Day and Mars Attacks with famous landmarks being blown up and debris flying everywhere. Well in a nutshell you are here to prevent the destruction of the cities (or add to it in my case) while battling the aliens. Learning early on via the tutorial that you are infact an indestructible inter-dimensional superbeing with the awesome powers of flight and immense destructive power, happy days!, the basic movement and shooting controls are easy to pick up. Referred to by a flashing orb as their “offspring” what can only be described as a wordart/powerpoint style subtitling gives you further guidance as to your mission objectives.
The grand scale of the world is immense as you begin to fly unrestricted through the mesosphere to find your first rendezvous point on the planet. I enjoyed the feeling of plunging rapidly through the clouds towards the ground as the screen and controller began to shake indicating a re-entry style burn-up, although atleast in this instance you haven’t got the fear of turning into charcoal! As you navigate at ground level the land is rippled with minimal detail however as you approach the waypoints for missions, large sprawling cities soon fill the skyline. Each of the missions see you combat waves of alien spaceships that have a primary goal of causing destruction and casualties to the city. There is a city status bar on the bottom left of your screen which if depletes loses you the mission and you must start again from whichever wave you were last on.
Combat entails you to chase various types of alien ship that drop from a main mothership and blow them up using your god like power before they do too much damage. Each alien craft has a red zone/button of various sizes that enables you to destroy the foe with one well aimed shot. Some alien ships are large and slow moving while some are tiny and flit about quickly with very small sweet spots to aim for. Manoeuvring yourself around the city is a simple affair and very quickly can become like a scene from a Hollywood movie as you narrowly miss (or hit) towering buildings as you fly and turn at break neck speeds along the avenues.
Once all of the waves have been defeated you are rewarded with a bit more of the background story as to who you are and also some new powers are revealed such as the ability to freeze time and a chargeable attack which I found causes wide spread destruction to the city below should you miss your alien target leading to the end of the planet. My bad, sorry people. Missions take place in various cities and get progressively harder as you go with more and more alien craft and a final battle where you get to blow up the mothership.
As you will have read earlier, Megaton Rainfall does incorporate a PSVR mode that I was also lucky enough to test out. I was unsure how the game would feel when played through a headset however I was pleasantly surprised. The sense of depth of the world and perception that you are infact flying is portrayed well and there are a few options to lessen the need for a sick bucket. Looking around enables you to steer your flight however there is also the option to flick the right stick of the controller to spin 90 degrees at a time. I managed around 15 minutes of gameplay before I needed to take some time out but I will say that for an indie game, the thrill of chasing down alien ships and blowing them to pieces was entertaining.
Graphics
The graphics aren’t the best in the world and detailing especially when up close is not great however what you must remember is the grand scale that all of this sits in. The whole world is available to fly around after all! If you fly to sort of where London is for example you will find the Houses of Parliament located almost beside the river Thames (unintentionally found to be destructible). Talking of which the destruction animations take me back to the John Woo movie era whereby slow-mo action scenes rule. When playing on PSVR this is far more prominent as bits of buildings and space ship fly towards you. At ground level there are actual people roaming around and they will run if you shoot them, vehicles also navigate the roads…and are equally destructible.
Sound
Megaton Rainfall has quite a cool soundtrack if i’m honest, ranging from mellow chill out ambience to trancy club music when you are undertaking a mission, the music adapts to the action. The voice of your father comes across in a loud futuristic god-like way and the sounds of flight and destruction match nicely with what is happening on the screen.
Longevity
Megaton Rainfall is not the longest game in the world to play through however it is different to many games that are currently on the market, therefore it should appeal to people that enjoy flying games that they cannot actually die in. To summarise its an immensely fun and destructive version of google earth. Time attack mode is fun however personally I would have loved a free roam mode that allowed me to do what I want, i.e flying around blowing up numerous buildings in my own time without fear that the city status bar will deplete and reset my progress/location. Megaton Rainfall can be enjoyed with or without PSVR however it is an amazing experience to play in VR!
I award Megaton Rainfall a Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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