Rest In Peace Department, or RIPD for short, started its life as a comic book out of Dark Horse studios. After being picked up for a movie adaptation, a video game was certain to follow. Like other video game/movie adaptation, it suffers from being treated like a promotional tool instead of a legitimate video game outing.
RIPD puts players in control of one of the two primary characters, Roy or Nick, and sets them in an area to combat a horde of Deado, the in-world name for the undead enemy. They then fight them, over and over again and… look, the intro animation gives insight to the world of RIPD, even going so far as to explain Nicks presence in the RIPD and his motivation, but the title itself doesn’t have even so much as tutorial, let alone a single-player mode to play out the story that the game itself sold on startup.
Visually, the title can be described as bland and soft. The primary character models look the part, but only at a few paces out. The closer one gets, the more generic the models become, like mannequins in costume. Being that RIPD is all about characters, this is a tragic turn, compounded by the fact that the enemy models are the same bland, boring stock as the primary models, making them not only hard to identify at a distance, but not really worth identifying in the first place.
Audibly, the title waffles between obnoxious and forgettable. No truly epic or even emotionally driving tracks occupy this title, making the music utterly worthless for indicating anything other than someone involved with the developers had instruments and could play them. The sound effects are repetitive and fail to indicate anything other than something is happening in the game.
Gameplay is a joke. The lack of a single player mode is the single most disappointing mistake; it’s like the developers saw an opportunity to fob off another horde-based third person title with a reskin and took it. There isn’t even a tutorial mode, making a players first outing awkward and unpleasant.
The actual game doesn’t even make not having a single player mode worthwhile. Players move slowly around hazy, poorly lit battlefield, firing generic weapons at an enemy that doesn’t seem to react to being hit, aside from eventually dying. This makes it difficult to gauge how effective a tactic or weapon is, or even whether or not they’re being hit. Not to mention, again, without a tutorial mode or even a practice area, getting new abilities only seems to result in a single match being weird while one experiments with new abilities, or simply disregarding new abilities altogether.
Overall, RIPD fails to be even a movie tie-in, and is just a cash-in on a movie being released. It isn’t even worth a trial download, let alone the $10 (800 MSP) asking price for a full purchase.
Spokanites can learn more about Rest In Peace Department almost anywhere. There isn’t an official website for the video game, which is quite telling. As always, if you’re looking for a fun game, look me up on Live @ OperatorJames.
