A good while ago, I took a shot in the dark and reviewed a little title known as Captain Novolin, which was a PSA game that was meant to teach diabetics how to handle their diabetes properly…….. and the game itself was a complete trainwreck. Sure, it was pretty informative for someone like myself who had basically zero knowledge about diabetics and what they do on a daily basis, but that doesn’t excuse the ugly graphics, the basic-ass set up, the bullshit enemy placement and difficulty, and little to no variety to make the game any more enjoyable than it already was. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I did have a bit of a spark of hope in my soul, thinking that this was just gonna be a one-time thing that I could just move on from and never think about again……. only for that spark of hope to then immediately be shot down when I discovered that there were three other games like this made by the same company that tackle different issues. It has been long enough now, so I think it’s about time I start to face these demons, starting off with Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon.
Unlike Captain Novolin, which focused on diabetes, this game is pretty much one giant PSA for smoking, and just from learning that fact alone, I was already pretty much tuned out from the get go. Let’s face it, ladies and gentlemen, smoking PSAs are EVERYWHERE, being one of the most over-abundant types of PSAs out there, and most of them don’t have any kind of effort when it comes to making you listen to what they have to say. Sure, I get it, it’s important to teach people, especially kids, the dangers of smoking, but at this point, it's become so abundant to where I wouldn’t be surprised if most people end up doing something like this because of it. Despite that though, I didn’t wanna go into the game with a negative mindset. After all, they could potentially be as informative as Captain Novolin was when it comes to the dangers of smoking, and the game itself could actually be pretty fun if proper time and care was put into it. So, does it manage to do either of those things?.............. I think you know the answer by now.
The story is admittedly hilariously stupid, where it centers around a man named Jake Westboro, who seemingly had it all made, but, due to the fact that he had been smoking since he was 15, he is now dying from the effects of not only smoking himself, but also from the cigarettes that he has sold through his company. Thankfully though, all is not lost, as the experimental surgeon Rex Ronan offers to shrink himself down, enter Jake’s body, and get rid of all the tar and disease that is slowly killing him, which he then proceeds to do. However, the Blackburn Tobacco Company, the company that Jake was the CEO of, start to worry that if Jake survives this, he will potentially spread the word of how dangerous smoking is and cause them to shut down, deploying several microbots into Jakes body to try to combat the experimental surgeon, so it is up to Rex to not only get rid of all the tar and disease within Jake’s body, but to also fend off the many foes that he will now face so that Jake will potentially live to see another day……………………….. it’s a pretty fucking stupid set-up, ain’t it? Although, not gonna lie, I am a huge fan of incredibly stupid premises in games like this, so it was enough to convince me to actually try to play this game, just to see how this “thrilling” tale could conclude.
The graphics are, admittedly, pretty impressive for what we have here, but I’m not gonna lie, a lot of it does look butt-ugly, with plenty of drab, uninteresting looks to all of the levels, as well as freakish sprites for the human characters to be seen throughout, the music is not very good at all, just being a bunch of stockish rock tracks that don’t fit with what is going on whatsoever, and none of them stand out as memorable or likable in the slightest, and the gameplay/control is simple for the most part, but then actually trying to get a handle on either of these aspects of the game is a whole nother story with how jank and awkward it can really be.
The game is a… 2D action game of some kind, where you take control of Rex Ronan, go through many different parts of Jake’s body where disease and infection have spread like wildfire, use your mighty hose-thing to spray away all of the infection wherever it may be so that Jake can live another day while also taking out plenty of enemies as well, gather plenty of different powerups that can do a multitude of things, such as giving you extra health and lives, as well as changing the type of shot you fire to either help make taking out the tar much easier, or way harder than it needs to, and in-between each level, take on a generic flying stage where you venture deeper into Jake’s body while avoiding plenty of obstacles so that you yourself don’t end up as another part of his body all together. It goes about as well as you would expect, and while I would say that I actually had a much better time with this game compared to Captain Novolin, I can’t lie and say that the game is better than that one, when in reality, it is on the same level as it, and in some cases, even worse than that previous game.
You wanna know what it is like to play a game of Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon? It’s like playing one giant game of Red Light Green Light. For every single main level of the game, it will mostly consist of you running around for one or two seconds, taking out an enemy if one manages to show up, and then you stand around and awkwardly shoot at tar in order to get rid of it. That is literally 90% of this entire game, which turns the game from being… you know, a game, into a repetitive chore that puts me to sleep every time I need to take part in doing it, especially when you have to work around the GARBAGE aim controls, which will have you constantly fidgeting around just so that you can find the proper spot so that you can hit a piece of tar depending on what type of shot you have. Mix that with all the other, awkward-ass functions you can do, such as a really over-the-top somersault and a useless kick move, and you have a control setup that is meant to make you feel pain and misery throughout the entire journey.
This also doesn’t help when you have to deal with the enemies, with some of them being manageable, but then you have some who have way too much health, and can definitely score a couple of hits on you if you don’t know they are coming, especially with the garbage scrolling of the screen. And if you think any of this is further expanded on with more gimmicks or different types of levels or foes, then you would be wrong, as every single level, despite looking slightly different, pretty much looks and feels the exact same, with the exception of the mouth level, but then again, that’s the first level of the game, with it all going right downhill from there.
So yeah, as you probably expected, the gameplay sucks shit, but how exactly does the game work as a PSA? I mean, after all, the game is meant to inform you of how dangerous smoking is, so does it manage to do this in a creative and meaningful way?............. no, not really. Throughout the game, there will be these mechanical orbs that you will find floating through the air, and when you shoot at it, it will give you a true or false statement about smoking and what it can do to you. If the statement is true, then you can touch the orb, and that somehow manages to cause a chain reaction that causes enemies to burst due to……….. them not being able to handle the truth, I dunno. These moments are the only instances in the entire game that give you any sort of “information” about smoking, and while I guess a lot of this info could be useful depending on who you ask, a lot of it is shit that you have probably heard many time before in your life, making you wonder why anyone would want to play this game in the first place when they can’t even properly deliver the message they want to get across, which shouldn’t be hard to do in the slightest.
Overall, despite me having a better time with it then I did with Captain Novolin, I can’t say in good conscience that this game is any better, because it just frankly isn’t, with it having ugly-ass visuals, boring as hell gameplay, janky controls and actions, little to no variety throughout the whole thing, and not even being able to properly tell why smoking is bad in the first place, which is especially important since it is a game meant to tell you why smoking is bad. The only real positive thing I can say about the game is that it has a very dumb, yet entertaining set-up, which can only get you so far at the end of the day, frankly, as there is no reason for anyone to play this, and you would be much better off just watching this game play out on YouTube rather than trying it out for yourself. But, before I go, there is one last piece of info that I want to share with you all, and that is the fact that Rex Ronan SUCKS at his job. How? Because despite how the game encourages you to eliminate all of the tar or infections in a level, you don’t actually have to do so in order to proceed forward and to beat the game. Sure, that does make the game much less of a repetitive slog, but in this case, if I am not required to get rid of any of the infections inside of this dude whatsoever, then WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF ANY OF THIS?!
Game #590
Unlike Captain Novolin, which focused on diabetes, this game is pretty much one giant PSA for smoking, and just from learning that fact alone, I was already pretty much tuned out from the get go. Let’s face it, ladies and gentlemen, smoking PSAs are EVERYWHERE, being one of the most over-abundant types of PSAs out there, and most of them don’t have any kind of effort when it comes to making you listen to what they have to say. Sure, I get it, it’s important to teach people, especially kids, the dangers of smoking, but at this point, it's become so abundant to where I wouldn’t be surprised if most people end up doing something like this because of it. Despite that though, I didn’t wanna go into the game with a negative mindset. After all, they could potentially be as informative as Captain Novolin was when it comes to the dangers of smoking, and the game itself could actually be pretty fun if proper time and care was put into it. So, does it manage to do either of those things?.............. I think you know the answer by now.
The story is admittedly hilariously stupid, where it centers around a man named Jake Westboro, who seemingly had it all made, but, due to the fact that he had been smoking since he was 15, he is now dying from the effects of not only smoking himself, but also from the cigarettes that he has sold through his company. Thankfully though, all is not lost, as the experimental surgeon Rex Ronan offers to shrink himself down, enter Jake’s body, and get rid of all the tar and disease that is slowly killing him, which he then proceeds to do. However, the Blackburn Tobacco Company, the company that Jake was the CEO of, start to worry that if Jake survives this, he will potentially spread the word of how dangerous smoking is and cause them to shut down, deploying several microbots into Jakes body to try to combat the experimental surgeon, so it is up to Rex to not only get rid of all the tar and disease within Jake’s body, but to also fend off the many foes that he will now face so that Jake will potentially live to see another day……………………….. it’s a pretty fucking stupid set-up, ain’t it? Although, not gonna lie, I am a huge fan of incredibly stupid premises in games like this, so it was enough to convince me to actually try to play this game, just to see how this “thrilling” tale could conclude.
The graphics are, admittedly, pretty impressive for what we have here, but I’m not gonna lie, a lot of it does look butt-ugly, with plenty of drab, uninteresting looks to all of the levels, as well as freakish sprites for the human characters to be seen throughout, the music is not very good at all, just being a bunch of stockish rock tracks that don’t fit with what is going on whatsoever, and none of them stand out as memorable or likable in the slightest, and the gameplay/control is simple for the most part, but then actually trying to get a handle on either of these aspects of the game is a whole nother story with how jank and awkward it can really be.
The game is a… 2D action game of some kind, where you take control of Rex Ronan, go through many different parts of Jake’s body where disease and infection have spread like wildfire, use your mighty hose-thing to spray away all of the infection wherever it may be so that Jake can live another day while also taking out plenty of enemies as well, gather plenty of different powerups that can do a multitude of things, such as giving you extra health and lives, as well as changing the type of shot you fire to either help make taking out the tar much easier, or way harder than it needs to, and in-between each level, take on a generic flying stage where you venture deeper into Jake’s body while avoiding plenty of obstacles so that you yourself don’t end up as another part of his body all together. It goes about as well as you would expect, and while I would say that I actually had a much better time with this game compared to Captain Novolin, I can’t lie and say that the game is better than that one, when in reality, it is on the same level as it, and in some cases, even worse than that previous game.
You wanna know what it is like to play a game of Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon? It’s like playing one giant game of Red Light Green Light. For every single main level of the game, it will mostly consist of you running around for one or two seconds, taking out an enemy if one manages to show up, and then you stand around and awkwardly shoot at tar in order to get rid of it. That is literally 90% of this entire game, which turns the game from being… you know, a game, into a repetitive chore that puts me to sleep every time I need to take part in doing it, especially when you have to work around the GARBAGE aim controls, which will have you constantly fidgeting around just so that you can find the proper spot so that you can hit a piece of tar depending on what type of shot you have. Mix that with all the other, awkward-ass functions you can do, such as a really over-the-top somersault and a useless kick move, and you have a control setup that is meant to make you feel pain and misery throughout the entire journey.
This also doesn’t help when you have to deal with the enemies, with some of them being manageable, but then you have some who have way too much health, and can definitely score a couple of hits on you if you don’t know they are coming, especially with the garbage scrolling of the screen. And if you think any of this is further expanded on with more gimmicks or different types of levels or foes, then you would be wrong, as every single level, despite looking slightly different, pretty much looks and feels the exact same, with the exception of the mouth level, but then again, that’s the first level of the game, with it all going right downhill from there.
So yeah, as you probably expected, the gameplay sucks shit, but how exactly does the game work as a PSA? I mean, after all, the game is meant to inform you of how dangerous smoking is, so does it manage to do this in a creative and meaningful way?............. no, not really. Throughout the game, there will be these mechanical orbs that you will find floating through the air, and when you shoot at it, it will give you a true or false statement about smoking and what it can do to you. If the statement is true, then you can touch the orb, and that somehow manages to cause a chain reaction that causes enemies to burst due to……….. them not being able to handle the truth, I dunno. These moments are the only instances in the entire game that give you any sort of “information” about smoking, and while I guess a lot of this info could be useful depending on who you ask, a lot of it is shit that you have probably heard many time before in your life, making you wonder why anyone would want to play this game in the first place when they can’t even properly deliver the message they want to get across, which shouldn’t be hard to do in the slightest.
Overall, despite me having a better time with it then I did with Captain Novolin, I can’t say in good conscience that this game is any better, because it just frankly isn’t, with it having ugly-ass visuals, boring as hell gameplay, janky controls and actions, little to no variety throughout the whole thing, and not even being able to properly tell why smoking is bad in the first place, which is especially important since it is a game meant to tell you why smoking is bad. The only real positive thing I can say about the game is that it has a very dumb, yet entertaining set-up, which can only get you so far at the end of the day, frankly, as there is no reason for anyone to play this, and you would be much better off just watching this game play out on YouTube rather than trying it out for yourself. But, before I go, there is one last piece of info that I want to share with you all, and that is the fact that Rex Ronan SUCKS at his job. How? Because despite how the game encourages you to eliminate all of the tar or infections in a level, you don’t actually have to do so in order to proceed forward and to beat the game. Sure, that does make the game much less of a repetitive slog, but in this case, if I am not required to get rid of any of the infections inside of this dude whatsoever, then WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF ANY OF THIS?!
Game #590
2 Comments
imagine kids in 1994 opening up their Christmas presents, but instead of getting MMX or smth like that, they get this
whu
28 days ago