In the modern era of 3D gaming, good side-scrolling games can be hard to come by. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is one of these few games. This PSN port of Ratloop’s game builds on the original Rocketbirds: Revolution!, which was a browser based game, by adding a host of new features including some new chapters and co-op game mode.

The game is a standard sides-scrolling shooter, which also avails of some very basic puzzles to attempt to test the player.

Story

The game is set in the bird inhabited land of Albatropolis, which is ruled with an iron fist by a tyrannical penguin named Putzki, who has the guise of a communist. You control a chicken character named Hardboiled, whose past we are given a brief insight to throughout the games cutscenes. Hardboiled spends the game in constant pursuit of Putzki, with the aim of silencing him and ending his totalitarian regime. On his travels, Hardboiled meets with various other birds who have been oppressed under Putzki and the mysterious resistance who aid you in battle.

Graphics & Sound

Rocketbirds boasts some beautiful graphics that have a playful, hand drawn, comic book feel. The backgrounds all appear simple, but on a closer inspection you’ll notice how detailed they are. A lot of the locations have a Soviet styled appearance, due to the presence black stars adorning buildings and of posters depicting the enemy leader as militant communist a lá Stalin. The character models are all animated excellently and each representation of different species of birds are all given the look of a militant brute.

The Rocketbirds soundtrack is made with music by the band NWR which features in all of the games cutscenes and occasionally during gameplay. The bands pop-rock music really adds to the fast paced tempo of the game. The voice acting is rare, but is very well done and comical all the same.

Gameplay

Rocketbirds is a side-scrolling shooter that is quite basic in principle, but still manages to stay tricky at times. Your character can only perform basic manoeuvres like jumping, crouching and rolling so in order to get the best out of a firefight, you have to be quick on the trigger. Getting caught in a pincer between two enemies can be difficult to escape from, since most enemies will fire at your lower body, rendering crouching useless. Though since the game has constant checkpoints, dying never feels too punishing.

There is a co-operative mode introduced to this console port of the game, which I unfortunately did not have time to play about with.

The weapons in the game are fun to use. Standard firearms include a pistol, machine gun and a shotgun which can all be upgraded further in the game. The weapons fire fast and ammo is always in abundance, so you can completely let rip when your character is attacking. As well as being able to throw grenades, you can also hurl small mind-controlling bugs which turn enemies into slaves. While running around as the host, you can assist Hardboiled by killing any enemies in the area or you can remain undercover and open blocked doors.

There are a handful of sections in the game where you can utilise your characters rocket-pack and engage in aerial dog-fights with other flying penguins. On these sections you can have great fun guiding homing missiles, which are trailing your character, into the paths of other unsuspecting enemies.

Conclusion

The console adaptation of Rocketbirds is fun, amusing and very easy to just sit back and play. The game took just over four hours to complete all of the fifteen chapters, and while that doesn’t sound too long, it is just the perfect amount of time to play it through without getting too bored of its repetitive nature. For trophy fiends, the game requires you to invest time in acquiring collectables and racking up both special one-time kills and multiple weapon kills. After finishing Rocketbirds, I wasn’t left with a hunger for more but I will definitely invest in a future sequel.