[REVIEW] Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

Joe Roobol

(PlayStation 3, PC [REVIEWED])

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a “cinematic adventure platformer” developed by Ratloop and Ratloop Asia. It follows the story of Hardboiled Chicken, one of, what is implied, the few remaining chickens on Earth. The game was unassuming at first; the premise was goofy as heck, and visually, it didn’t seem to have much to offer despite some kickin’ rad rock music, but first impressions can be (sort of) deceiving. The game is based on an animated short created by Ratloop in 2000 called Albatropolis. Thematically, the game and the animation are a little different, though the basic concept is the same: anthropomorphic birds at war. Hardboiled is fighting with his avian allies to overthrow the evil penguin regime.

The controls in this game aren’t great on PC. It’s pretty clearly a port of the PSN version of the game, as menus are navigated using the cursor keys, the enter key and backspace by default. It’s an awkward thing that takes a couple play sessions to get used to, however the control problem doesn’t persist into actual gameplay, where the default scheme is much more sane. Hardboiled isn’t the swiftest guy around, and the platforming reflects that. Jumping handles similarly to early PC platformers like Another World or the first couple games in the Oddworld series.

Visually, Rocketbirds isn’t a graphical powerhouse, however it makes up for it by having a fantastic aesthetic. Most places in Albatropolis have a very oppressive Stalin’s Russia feeling to it and the penguin army itself has a distinctly Nazi Germany look. It gives the game some pretty dark vibes which juxtaposes in a cool way against the ridiculousness of the existence of Hardboiled and his fellow bird-people. The best imagery in the game, I feel, is found in the backgrounds and in cutscenes which very quickly changes from over-the-top action in the intro to the grim story of Hardboiled’s life.

The biggest thing the game has to offer, in my opinion, is the soundtrack. The music in Rocketbirds was created by the L.A.-based “science fiction rock” group New World Revolution. Major cutscenes don’t feature any dialogue, and are instead presented as music videos, and for the most part it works. The sound design is otherwise passable. Every big fight was backed by some appropriate tunes, however I felt like there were too many periods of dead silence between these sections.

Combat in Rocketbirds isn’t fantastic, but it’s functional. Because the game has a bit of a bigger focus on jumping and puzzle solving than it does shooting, enemies are little more than roadblocks that are easily dispatched with even the weakest of weapons. The exception to this is at two points during the game, arenas full of waves of respawning enemies hold the gameplay hostage until you’ve killed innumerable amounts of penguins. Normally I’m ready for a big combat-oriented slog in a video game for the challenge of it, however with the mediocre shooting combined with how easily interrupted the character is, these two sections are just boring and borderline frustrating.

There are a couple of segments of the game dedicated to aerial combat. These parts handle much better than fighting on the ground, in my opinion. While they share the respawning enemies mechanic with the arena wave fights, you’re given a lot more room to maneuver and the enemies have more interesting weapons. The flight sections of Rocketbirds doesn’t have much else to it, however. They end as suddenly as they show up and it feels like a little lost potential.

There is also a supplementary co-op mode offered. What I appreciated most is that the game offers both local “couch co-op” by using the keyboard and mouse and a controller, as well as online co-op. This campaign is roughly two-thirds the length of the main campaign, and features a set of different characters and a different story. While I only got a small taste of the co-op during my time with the game, it looked to be more or less just more of the same as the single player.

I want to like Rocketbirds. It’s a game that tries. It is kind of unique in today’s video game climate, and I really loved the aesthetics and music despite some flaws. However at about 3 hours playtime for the single player campaign with little in the way of replayability and a ten dollar price point, it’s a little difficult to recommend. I would suggest anyone interested, particularly those who are interested in the music, to try out the demo of the original version of the game available on the developer’s website to get a feel for how it plays before making a decision.