#24 - The Adventures of Rad Gravity

Rad Gravity resembles Bruce Campbell a bit, but don't be fooled! You can't wield a boomstick in the game.



It kind of resembles dump here, but it gets better.

I really thought I was going to hate this game. Playing something, anything with a name like "Rad Gravity" sounds as appealing as eating a box of florescent-colored erasers. Despite the game's early '90's outer-space feel, it does have some creativity flowing through its veins. Said creativity is almost enough to ignore some of the game's key flaws, but unfortunately these flaws hold Rad down from being an even better game.

You begin your journey in space, and your goal is to retrieve... things in order to make the... other things work. To be honest, the story was pretty vague, and I can't find a decent summary of the plot anywhere online (Wikipedia fail). It doesn't matter. The point is to travel from planet to planet, collecting things like more life, better weapons, creamier hair gel, etc. As you go along, you run into crazy enemies, like Naked Robotic Fat Guy and Lady Mall Walker. The enemies aren't very difficult to defeat, but it's often hard to dodge their projectiles. Your best bet is to run past them if you can. The graphics start off bland-looking, but become more interesting as you progress through the game. The controls work surprisingly well. Rad's controls reminded me of how tight the original Mario's controls were, which is definitely a compliment. The music sounds like butt cheese (I calls it like I hears it), but it's easy to ignore.

So what about the flaws? The enemies like to fly at you from across the screen where you can't see them until you're already hit. It's also hard to get past some of the obstacles in later levels without taking significant damage. As I said before, the story is vague and it can be difficult to figure out where to go; oftentimes, it's just trial and error.

Overall, the game is kind of a rare treat for me at this stage in my quest: an average NES action game. Most of the time, it seems like I'm trudging through the dregs of the NES library, or being blinded by the greatness of some NES gems. The latter I can't stop playing, and the former I don't want to play for more than a couple minutes. It's nice to have something in between. Thanks for the break, Rad.

C+