R.I.P.D.: The Game Review

Six feet underwhelming

In spite of being generally underwhelming, I must give R.I.P.D. some credit for not being the weak action game I expected from the typical movie tie-in. Instead, it’s an entirely multiplayer cooperative horde shooter with some interesting ideas for in-map challenges. Yet throughout all seven of its cramped, congested, and frankly boring maps I consistently found myself wondering what, exactly, I was supposed to get out of the experience.

Fun fact: zombies are full of blue sparkles.

It's certainly not banking on whatever charm the supernatural buddy-cop movie might possess to win me over, because while the models resemble ugly versions of Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds' characters, there is almost no voice work. When there is, it’s a one-liner spat out by an unrecognizable voice actor. Similarly, there's no expanded story content. As you'd expect from a multiplayer game, the only inkling we get of what’s going on comes from the poorly narrated exposition upon startup.
It's not going for variety, either. Matches are made up of five rounds of increasing difficulty, in which the doughty heroes are approached by zombies (or something like them) from
all sides. Simply put: in order to defeat them, you shoot them until they fall down. That's as much fun here as it is in most very basic shooters, except that R.I.P.D. barely lifts a finger to make it significantly more interesting. There is little variation from one session to the next, despite numerous weapons available to buy. Some of these weapons were actually a fun unlockable to reach for, like the banana, for instance, being that it was a departure from all of the other weapons (other than its counterpart hairdryer) and was one of the few shout-outs to the movie. However, most of the weapons I had access to in the beginning were significantly less entertaining. Buying and upgrading weapons at least gives a sense of progression, but nothing really compelled me to come back for more. It's also difficult to tell what's actually happening, such as where your teammate is and whether you're winning. Your partner is only marked by a username above his head, which can only be seen when you’re five feet away from him as at all other times it hops around the screen and flashes on and off at random. If he goes down, you have to use a jumpy and difficult-to-follow icon above his head to somehow reach him in time to revive him, and this is only made more difficult by the fact that there’s no apparent way to communicate in-game.There’s also no minimap or other helpful navigation tool, so it's easy to get lost even on these small maps, and many have boundaries that are almost indiscernible from the rest of the terrain. That, combined with the bug where sprinting often caused me to run straight up vertical surfaces and get stuck there, is the bad kind of hilarious.
Meanwhile, other than a small blood-splatter effect – almost unrecognizable against the washed-out and blotchy enemy models – there is no feedback to tell you if you’ve hit something. Thus, I simply continuously fired my poorly designed shotgun (which has no bullet spread, for some reason) until the enemies dissolved into blue sparkles.

Good thing killing each other isn't counterproductive or anything.

Also surprising is how difficult R.I.P.D.'s asinine matchmaking system made it for me to actually play with another person. (There are no bots.) It seems that the only way to be matched is for both people to search at the same time, be on the same difficulty setting, and not be the same character. Because of these stipulations, I found myself waiting for almost 45 minutes to get into a game. When I finally did, they usually either disconnected halfway through or the server lagged out and automatically booted us.
Once I finally found someone to play with, it was actually almost enjoyable. There are some interesting mechanics associated with the in-match challenges, such as the ability to earn extra points for arresting a powerful enemy by standing near him for the allotted time, or the granting of special abilities for earning high kill streaks. Unfortunately, these abilities seem to lack rhyme or reason, and without an extensive or helpful tutorial, the only way to find out what they do is trial and error.
Another strange aspect of this supposedly cooperative game is that it does its best to turn us against each other. Before each match, you're presented with a list of “bets” to take turns crossing off until only one remains. This becomes the active bet of the match, and whoever wins the bet gets extra cash at the end, which doesn't exactly fuel the spirit of cooperation. One of these involves dueling your partner at a random point in the match, which seems like a pretty mean-spirited bet. In addition, once you complete a match (either win or lose) with a randomly matched partner, you’re immediately separated from each other, and in order to play again you have to find a new one.