Retro City Rampage is a Grand Theft Auto-style parody, rendered in pixel graphics and crammed full of 80s and 90's references.
The gameplay is fast, and the references also come thick and fast including Mario, Turtles, Ghostbusters, Batman, Back To The Future, Duck Hunt, Frogger, Bill and Ted, and Paper Boy.
You are simply called "Player", who is a criminal for hire. After taking part in a heist, he stumbles into Bill and Ted, and travels into the future in their phone-box. There he meets Doc Choc who is like the Doc from Back To The Future. You must work with Doc Choc to gather the parts needed to repair the time-travelling phone-box.
The missions are mainly comprised of busy work; drive here, then return. Go here, kill some enemies, then return. The amount of times you are expected to return to Doc Choc's lab is ridiculous; it becomes a chore within the first hour. Some missions do involve lots of shooting, and you may be up against waves of enemies. Some missions involve going on a rampage and ploughing into people. Sometimes you will get some kind of mini-game like the Paper Boy parody where you are flinging mail into letterboxes. Either way, it is pretty simplistic, pretty clunky and gets old fast.
There are few power-ups such as hyper-speed which basically means you can run faster than cars and cause destruction when running into people or objects. When this is used as an essential part of the mission; it is very mindless because you usually just hold one direction and watch the carnage that follows.
To attack, Player can punch, throw, use weapons or jump then stomp on people's heads. Stomping is a very effective attack against the majority of enemies, although some can grab and throw you. Your leap covers a large distance, so is great for retreating too. When shooting guns, you can fire in many directions or use the lock-on; but this is very clunky. You have to shoot whilst walking forward, then you can move back/strafe.
There are times when ducking behind cover is essential, but towards the end of the game this feature seemed to be forgotten about. You can be set on fire by explosions or flamethrowers, and you must extinguish yourself in sources of water, or by destroying fire hydrants.
The missions which involved spawning enemies in were mainly annoying. Sometimes the number of enemies made the game challenging and fun; but there's plenty of times where it just seemed unfair. Enemies can spawn in annoying locations such as the one where you are about to reach DK and then some rocket troopers spawn right in front of you at point-blank range and insta-kill you.
Like in Grand Theft Auto, you steal cars to travel around. Whilst driving, you can venture onto the pavement and start mowing people down. There are many police patrolling the streets, either on foot or in cars; and they will chase after you. The more carnage you cause, the more intensely they will pursue. Being chased doesn't stop you from starting missions, so you can just plough a few people down before you reach your mission marker. It's definitely more of a casual experience than Grand Theft Auto.
The game puts so much of its appeal in the references that I think it surely is only good for those who remember 80s and 90s culture, or remember the original Grand Theft Auto. It's very fast-paced and absurd, but it's too clunky and repetitive to recommend. To complete it, I found that I had to force myself to return to it on a few occasions. I actually started this game on the 3DS, then after not playing it for a month, I decided to play the PC version instead to see if it was better to play. It didn't make much difference. (Both versions I acquired in Humble Bundles).