Review: RICO – A Great Tactical Shooter That Truly Comes Alive In Co-Op
‘Kick doors, kill men.’ These four seemingly simple words, which appear on-screen while you patiently wait for one of RICO’s procedurally generated levels to load, might seem like a throwaway line – and yet they perfectly sum up its bombastic simplicity. For all the extra objectives and features, everything boils down to putting boots to doors and asses, and that’s what makes its first-person shooter action so addictive.
Falling into that randomly laid out and semi-roguelike corner of the industry populated by the likes of City of Brass, RICO is a co-operative FPS that revels in the moment-to-moment exchanges of its gunfights. You play an agent of a task force sent to hunt down and destabilise criminal organisations the only way you know how: by killing every drug-peddling, gun-running felon stupid enough to stray into your crosshairs. You’re here to deal out justice, one room at a time.
Quite literally, too. You’ll work your way through a web of criminals, each posted throughout a randomly-generated set of rooms. Sometimes you’ll need to collect evidence in briefcases, defuse bombs in a given timeframe or destroy assets in the field, but while you’re doing that you’ll need to end the life of every criminal you encounter. Every time you reach a door you’ll press ‘B’ to kick it in and initiate a short burst of bullet time. When every enemy inside is dead, the room will be cleared and you’ll be free to pursue any objectives or collect any ammo or health before progressing to the next room.
By defining its action with short bursts of gunplay, each set of randomised rooms is different; you never know what you’re going to get next. Will it be a large open drawing room filled with shotgun-wielding jumpsuits? Or a small corridor with bald-headed enforcers with tyre irons and desire to bash your head in? Will you choose to go in with the accuracy and reduced range of your pistol, or try and clear house with the extra power and unwieldy recoil of an AK47-style assault rifle?
You can actually finish a level at any time by returning to the door you first entered it from, but the more rooms you clear and the more objectives you complete, the better your rewards at the end. You’ll earn XP, which will level you up and unlock new traits and weapons, but you’ll also earn merits. These tokens enable you to buy new guns, attachments and tactical items, but also top up your health and your armour. Your health level is persistent throughout, so forget to restore your health and you’ll need to fight at a disadvantage and hope you breach and clear a room with some health pickups within.
Backing up that roguelike persistence comes the risk/reward of each mission. Should you die at any point while kicking doors and killing men, that mission will remain permanently failed and it’ll black out any further missions along that arm of the sting. By losing those missions you’ll also lose a source of XP and merits, so it pays to play with caution as much as it does with gung-ho gunplay. You can run and slide, enabling you to pull off the kind of moves that would turn John Woo green with envy, but it’s easy to get shredded by a flurry of enemy fire, so you’ll need to use those bursts of slow-mo to hit the biggest threats in a room quickly and pull back to pick off the rest by training your iron sights on the doorway.
You can play through every mission solo – whether through a campaign or missions, in quick play or in a daily set of rooms – but things get really interesting when you play in co-op. You team up with a buddy locally via split-screen in docked mode, or you can head online and unleash bullet-based justice from afar. With a partner in tow, you’ll need to breach doors at the same time in order for bullet time to kick in, so working together is the only way to truly excel. And it makes for one hell of a rush as you both breach a room from different directions, causing the enemies within to split their attention before a barrage of death arrives forthwith.
On Nintendo Switch, loading times can sometimes stretch on a little too long and textures can occasionally take a bit too much time to pop in, but performance is mostly pretty solid. With its semi-cel-shaded graphics and simple corridor and room designs, RICO isn’t going to make your eyes glaze over with its artistic splendour, but the simple gunplay and over-the-top encounters mean it’s a perfect fit for Switch’s pick-up-and-play ethos. There are even daily missions to complete, which come with leaderboards and the chance to earn a currency that unlocks new weapon skins, so you can keep unlocking new things even when you’ve only got five minutes to spare.
Conclusion
RICO is simple, moreish fun in arcade FPS form; a literal corridor shooter that makes every gunfight a glorious exchange of bullets as you fight your way to the words ‘Room cleared’ over and over again. It’s great fun in single-player, but when you head into each randomised set of rooms in co-op, you’ll shoot your way into an interactive buddy cop movie right there in the palm of your hands. Loading times and the occasional bit of pop-in aside, this is another fine addition to the console’s growing list of first-person shooters.
PDP Launches Luigi And Peach GameCube Controllers For Nintendo Switch
Video game accessory maker PDP is back with another couple of glorious looking GameCube pads designed for use with your Nintendo Switch.
Just like previous releases, these two controllers feature the GameCube’s traditional C-stick, giving buyers the option to swap it out for a normal, full-size stick instead if they prefer. They plug into your Switch dock via a 10-foot USB cable (so no controller adapter required) and could be an ideal option for those wanting to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with a GameCube controller setup.
These two designs are both launching today via GameStop and PDP’s own website (although they appear to be sold out here already). They’re also available to pre-order from Amazon for $24.99 each with worldwide shipping (for some reason, Amazon appears to be stocking them slightly later, expected to ship in May). You can get the Luigi one here, and the Peach one here.
If you missed them last time, PDP has also released other variants of these controllers featuring Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon.
Do you like the designs? Will you be treating yourself to one? Let us know which is your favourite in the comments below.
Bricksburg is in ruins and Emmet's friends have been taken! Team up with Emmet and a host of heroic characters to save their friends from the strange inhabitants of the Systar System. Journey into outer space, discover new worlds, and test your Master Building skills.
The story is set several years after Devil May Cry 4.
Legendary DMC action returns, made all the more stylish by the power modern gaming has to offer.
Behold stunning visuals built upon the technology that brought you Resident Evil 7 biohazard. High framerate graphics and flexible design give our creators what they need to offer fans the latest and greatest DMC experience.
Captain Marvel Has Massive Opening At The Box Office
Marvel's newest movie, Captain Marvel, opened in theaters this past weekend, and it enjoyed a massive, record-breaking debut at the box office. According to Deadline, the movie made $153 million in the United States and Canada, with a further $302 million coming in from international markets. Globally, Captain Marvel made $455 million for its first weekend despite an otherwise slow start to the year for the film industry's overall box office.
The domestic haul of $153 million represents the third-biggest debut for a movie in March in the history of film, only behind Beauty and the Beast ($174.7 million) and Batman v. Superman ($166 million).
Additionally, Captain Marvel's opening-weekend box office performance is better than the opening weekends for Iron Man 1 and 2, the first two Captain America movies, all the Thor films, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2, and every Spider-Man movie ever released. Captain Marvel also opened to a bigger first-weekend box office number than Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Suicide Squad, Venom, and every X-Men movie ever.
"Marvel Studios continues to have an incredible track record that remains unbroken," Disney executive Cathleen Taff said. " Audiences feel they know what they are getting when they buy their movie ticket."
On a global basis, Captain Marvel had the second-best best opening for a superhero film ever, only behind Avengers: Infinity War ($640.5 million). The $302 million that Captain Marvel made for its opening weekend is the sixth-biggest opening in the history of movies on a worldwide basis.
In North America, Captain Marvel finished its opening weekend as the seventh-largest opening weekend in the MCU. It was eclipsed by Iron Man 3, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, and all three Avengers films.
Captain Marvel, which reportedly cost $150 million to make, holds the record for the biggest opening-weekend in the history of film for a female-led movie on a global basis. Its $455 million haul eclipses the Emma Watson-starring Beauty and the Beast ($357 million), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
209 were laid off from Blizzard as part of earlier Activision Blizzard cuts
Last month’s massive layoffs at Activision Blizzard left an estimated 800 employees without a job, and a document spotted by PCGamesInsider has information on how those layoffs were felt at Overwatch developer Blizzard.
According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filing spotted by the publication, 209 Blizzard employees were let go as a result of Activision Blizzard’s layoff wave. It’s a sobering look at which specific roles were affected and which departments were deemed to have redundancies after Blizzard parent Activision Blizzard clocked a record year.
On a department by department basis, IT was hit hardest by the cuts with 41 people laid off across all of Blizzard’s locations in the United States. Following after that, marketing saw a loss of 29 staff members between Blizzard’s Irvine, California and Austin, Texas offices. The live experiences teams in Irvine, Burbank, and Austin also saw 29 people laid off as well. HR saw 18 people let go, global insights saw 15 staff laid off, North American publishing lost 12 people, QA lost 11 staff, Latin America publishing was cut by 10 positions, the web and mobile team lost 9 people, and the finance and commercial teams lost 8 staff.
The WARN finding also mentions layoffs related to Activision, including 7 people laid off from Activision Publishing and Blizzard’s consumer products team, 5 laid off from the Battle.net team, and the facilities department laying off 3 staff members.
This doesn’t include the 100 Blizzard support staff that were offered a cash offer of a year’s pay to walk away from their jobs at Blizzard Entertainment’s Cork office two months before parent company Activision Blizzard announced the layoffs.
As PCGamesInsider points out, the current tally of known cuts hasn’t yet met the estimate of 800 affected developers. Including closures like King’s Z2Live studio and San Francisco office, around 500 or so positions have been publicly cut from Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries in the last month.
In a statement sent to PCGamesInsider after it published the contents of the WARN filing, a Blizzard representative said the following:
“We are unable to provide additional details beyond what we’ve publicly disclosed. While the changes were difficult, they were important for supporting our current game-development priorities, which will serve as the foundation for Blizzard’s future. This will ultimately put us in the best position to create epic, high-quality content and entertainment experiences for our players around the world.”
Play the charming Puppet Pandemonium and Klaxo Radio Hour at GDC 2019
As you’re planning out what to see and do at the 2019 Game Developers Conference later this month, make sure you leave time in your busy schedule to check out some of the cool games and exhibits available at the show!
Both are innovative games with custom-built control setups that are fun to play with friends (Puppet Pandemonium practically demands it), so make some time to check them out!
As you can see, Puppet Pandemonium proved to be a popular experience when it was on the GDC 2018 Expo Floor as part of that year’s Alt.Ctrl.GDC Showcase. This year it will be back (albeit in the West Hall, instead of on the Expo Floor) and playable by all GDC 2019 attendees, along with Klaxo Radio Hour.
Here’s a trailer for Klaxo, to give you a sense of what’s in store when you get to the show:
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And if you haven’t started planning out your time at the show yet, now’s the time — and it’s easy to get started!
Just head on over to the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler; there you can begin to lay out what talks you want to see at GDC 2019, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.
Save 50% On Top Nintendo Switch LEGO Games For A Limited Time (North America)
The Switch is slowly but surely gathering a mighty collection of LEGO games – some franchise-based, others original ideas – and a selection of these are currently on offer on the North American Nintendo eShop.
Not all LEGO games have been included (with the recently released The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame understandably missing out amongst others), but there are some very fine options available indeed. Here are those chosen games and the prices you need to know:
You can find all of these deals via Nintendo’s official website or on the eShop itself. The offer ends at 8:59am PT on 13th March.
Will you be snapping up any of these tasty offers? Are you a fan of LEGO games? Let us know in the comments.
