If you noticed my rating of this game, Rango for Nintendo DS surprised me. It’s simply a solid top-down action game.

You control Rango as he makes his way to find meteor shards and rescue Beans' missing father, and fighting Bad Bill and his goons. Rango can switch between his different roles, by holding R and pressing one of the 4 directions on the D-Pad. At the beginning, Sherriff and “out of character” personas available. As Sheriff, you posess a peashooter, which is used to shoot at enemies and even flash enemies with a badge to stun them, which is unlocked pretty late in the game, and in casual stance, you can get more close and personal, as well as run fast, which is useful for traversing long distances, and also useful for timed switches. You can also block melee attacks with any persona that isn’t Sheriff if you hold the R button and lock onto an enemy. The game automatically locks you onto them so you can strafe, of course, just holding R also makes you strafe, and potentially lock onto enemies if you haven’t attacked them beforehand to do that, and press the R again to undo the lock-on. In a way, this game feels like a massaged Monster House GBA. Later on, you unlock more personas, and other items that can be used in combat. Excavator persona with a pickaxe can be used to uncover treasure, there are also some spots that are marked with a red X that only appears when you’re in that persona, and hitting that area yields lots of rewards, and counts towards a 100% completion. The pickaxe itself is slow to swing, but has a surprisingly high damage output. Lastly, there’s a Duelist persona, you can do a roll to quickly get away from enemy attacks, though it doesn’t give you invulnerability. You can also quickly dash towards the enemy if you lock onto them to give in some quick hits... seriously, you can upgrade that persona to hit pretty fast, aside from overall damage output, but I’ll talk about upgrades later. Also, Duelist persona can jump over some small gaps, usually leading to secrets. As for the items, there are homing golden bullets that can be shot as Sherriff and it can be aimed manually. It can be used to hit far-away levers and can also be used to scout areas ahead and potentially clear out enemies. Firecrackers can be thrown as Excavator, and, well… it’s good against enemies, and can be used to blow up walls for secrets, though be careful not to get hit by your own firecracker, your health can drop significantly. There’s a level of strategy when using different personas, and I found myself making use of all of them in different situations, even normal Rango who, even fully upgraded, is outmatched by pickaxe or a sword, but is still useful for running ability, and making a quick run from one area to another. Of course, to make traversing less of a hassle, there are 4 roadrunner points, which act as fast travel.

There’s not that much enemy variety, but there is some. Naturally, there are enemies that shoot their own projectiles, and those that get close and personal. There are enemies that hurl firecrackers at you, or those that charge. There are rodents that jump on top of you, trying to squish you, that only appear in the first few areas. Thare are also giant charging rodents can even stun you, disabling the ability to change current persona and defaulting you to normal Rango. There are also annoying flies that swoop into you and seem to damage you even when they die, for some reason. There are also lizard eating plants, though they can also eat other enemies. Coming near them is ill advised, unless you can roll past its attacks, and its invulnerable to normal peashooter shots. Using firecrackers or gold bullets can be beneficial. There are also big pickaxe enemies, that are also invulnerable to normal shots, so, getting close and personal is it. Admittedly, that’s not a whole lot, so the combat can feel a little bit repetitive at times. The bosses, on the other hand, are actually a highlight, featuring interesting patterns to learn, and are just engaging. For example, the rattlesnake jack, the second boss of the game, sees you chipping its health away, while it slithers about and occasionally shoots at you. It would be a pretty easy fight with all the firecrackers lying about (btw, I’m going to call them dynamite from now on, because c’mon), but when its health is seemingly depleted, phase 2 begins, where using dynamite is required, and it moves about faster. When it sits on one of the four wooden panels, you need to throw dynamite at it to crack that panel. Crack the same panel twice, and the boss is toast.

Throughout the game, you’ll find the game’s few collectibles, like metal bits (gold) used to buy stuff, and upgrade tokens to upgrade Rango’s roles, stuff like damage, item capacity or other things. There are also power-ups, depending on the color, enhances one of Rango’s roles (except for out of character one for some reason), stuff like increasing peashooter’s fire rate or making pickaxe swing around and excavate in a 3x3 grid, or making duelist’s roll damage enemies, though these effects are temporary. There are chests to be found pretty much everywhere which usually contain aforementioned upgrade tokens, and, in specific chests, fruit that gives extra health. It’s much easier to buy all the fruit from the salon to upgrade Rango’s health up to 17 hearts, though if you die, you always start with 3, as if this were Metroid for NES. There are also a few side quests, which usually involve killing specific enemies and only one that sees you picking up crates in the desert, lost merchandise. While not much, they do provide a little bit of a distraction. Did you know that there are achievements in this game? Something that's not very common for the platform. They’re called feats, and involve stuff like upgrading your roles fully, or killing enemies with golden bullets or dynamite, stuff like that. I was invested in this game, that I went for 100% completion… I would’ve liked to say I succeeded, but I missed a single chest and about 6 red marks for excavation. I really wish the game had a way to track how many of these things are left to be found in a particular area. The map at the top only provides the layout of the area and maybe a marker to tell you where to go if you’re still going through the story. As much as I like this game, I'm not going to wander around figuring out where I missed stuff.

The graphics are quite solid, and the music is pretty good. The plot doesn’t actually follow the movie, and it genuinely feels like a fever dream. I mean, there are aliens at the end and everything. It opens up with Rango incinerating some guy with a metor shard. There was a vision from Mr. Timms in the dessert, Beans says something about “defensive mechanism kicking in again”. I was sure that the game would be written off as a stroke, but uhh, that doesn’t happen. There’s also a mention of zombies, which is called out as something that didn’t happen, but it does seem to be exclusive to the Home Console versions of the game.

Of course, Rango is not without faults, aside from others that I've mentioned previously. For one, I found it way too easy to accidently jump down ledges and having to climb up the place I were in before, Monster House GBA had you push against where you wanted to jump down for a little longer, but I also don’t remember many instances where I could’ve accidentally jumped and reset my progress. There are also box-pushing “puzzles”. As excavator, you can push and pull objects onto switches, and there’s only one that I found to be interesting, the rest felt like a time waste. Another issue with these, is that you can accidentally undo your progress – if you die, and press the switch, the opened gate will close back, which means you’ll have to push those boxes back where they belong, since they reset to their original positions. Lastly, there are a few enemies that are burrowed in the ground that only appear when you get close, which can feel a little cheap.

Overall, Rango for Nintendo DS ended up being a pretty enjoyable experience. It’s one of those elusive “good” licensed games for the handheld that I may even pronounce a “hidden gem”. It’s not flawless of course and far from great, the combat can be a little repetitive at times, and it probably could’ve used more enemy variety and a little more polish, but I do like its overall design, and it’s a surprisingly fun time. I can actually recommend giving this one a go.