Randall Review

Despite namesakes of the genre Castlevania and Metroid being on extended hiatus, the metroidvania genre has flourished over the last few years. Indies Hollow Knight and Dead Cells have arrived to critical acclaim, while the recently announced Ori and the Will of the Wisps was a highlight of Microsoft’s E3 showing. Developers continue to mold the genre to fit their visions in imaginative and incredible ways. Coahuila-based studio We The Force is looking to create their own mark on the genre with their debut effort, Randall.

Randall puts players into the shoes of the titular man, an amnesiac with a past worth forgetting. After waking up in a mysterious facility with little idea of how he got there, our hero sets out to find some answers. The world he inhabits, though, is cruel, especially towards Randall, who holds a greater importance than he realizes. Over time, he learns more about why he is being sought after, and what his mission ultimately is. Oh yeah, he also is mildly schizophrenic, with a nagging voice always trying to get its way.

The core idea of a totalitarian government run amok is always fun to play with, so I was interested to see what Randall would do with the premise. Unfortunately, the story is borderline incomprehensible. You meet characters, but We The Force doesn’t do a great job of explaining who they are or how they fit into our hero’s story. Randall himself isn’t a great character either, and the awkward jokes he spouts clash harshly with the oppressive mood the game is trying to create. And while I’m sure the studio tried their best with the translation, the dialogue is a bit of a mess. Broken sentences and localization mishaps, like the time Randall said “Time to explore this sh*t whole!” are unfortunately commonplace in the title.

I would be willing to look past the sloppy storytelling if the gameplay was next-level, but that’s not the case here. If you’re familiar with the metroidvania genre, you’ll have a good grasp of some of the mechanics in Randall. There’s a decently sized world for you to explore, new abilities to unlock and additional power-ups stashed away in areas that can only be accessed later on in the game. The title also takes some cues from modern platformers, particularly the tough difficulty found in the likes of Super Meat Boy or Fenix Furia. That’s not to say this is as nearly as tough as those titles, but it does provide some challenge.

Unfortunately, while other entries in the genre make exploring their world fun and, hopefully, non-repetitive, Randall is a pain to deal with. Each area, whether it’s the beginning Academy or late-game Catacomb, is littered with traps that can kill you in one shot. This would be frustrating to work around even if things felt good, but the platforming just doesn’t feel good. Randall’s jumps are floaty, which makes the tight timing window the game requires that much more frustrating. That is, of course, if the game registers your input, which is never a given. You have a parkour flip and dash in your arsenal that makes things a little more bearable, but those moves don’t fix the core problems of the game.

Even if the game didn’t control so sloppily, though, I’m not sure that the levels would be that great. Outside of cosmetic differences, each new location doesn’t feel that much different from the previous one. Electric traps? Check. Mindless enemies? Check. There’s just not a lot of variety to be found, and in a game that only lasts a few hours, that’s not good. One thing that may have made trudging through the game more bearable, though, would have been a better map system. There is a bare bones map in the game, and the fact that you can only access it at certain locations prevents you from relying on it too much. However, when you do bring up the map, it’s still hard to pinpoint exactly where you are. Every level has the same boring design, with only longer tunnels being the difference between them. It’s pretty much useless for trying to figure out where to go.

Certain sections of each area also require Randall to tap into his psychic abilities. Acquired a little under midway through the game, he can utilize his powers in order to augment his attacks or take control of enemies. While you don’t need to take over anyone in order to survive a fight, you do need to take over some in order to move past certain obstacles. One enemy has magnetic boots which allow you to walk on the ceiling, while the droids you can latch onto let you fly through instakill mazes. These portions of the game are slightly more enjoyable because they move away from the floaty, inaccurate jumping that plagues the traditional sections. I’m not saying they’re great, but at least they are bearable.

As mentioned, Randall’s psychic powers also play a role in the combat of the game. Over time, you’ll be able to use these skills to execute stronger punches and smashes, albeit on a limited basis. You can also possess enemies and use them to attack their partners, if you feel so inclined. It’s a good thing that you have these mental skills, though, because otherwise the combat would be a complete disaster. Randall has a limited arsenal of punches and kicks, but it doesn’t matter, as you can use the same combo over and over again and largely be fine. You’ll need to switch things up for the boss battles, but that’s only because of the cheap, one-hit kill factor that is prevalent in most of them. Simplistic and dull, which is par for the course for the game.

The shallow combat and obnoxious platforming aren’t helped by the terrible performance of Randall on the PlayStation 4. The aforementioned input lag is the most egregious example, but the title also suffers from both crippling lag and game-breaking bugs. Sections with more than three characters on screen often slow to a crawl, and one tricky part near the end of the game is borderline unplayable due to massive slowdown. The bugs are less frequent, but there were times where I had to reload a previous save because an enemy wouldn’t die, which in turn wouldn’t unlock the forcefield blocking my way forward. The save system, thankfully, isn’t terrible, but bugs of this nature shouldn’t be tolerated.

There’s a lot that can be done for depicting a world gone to hell, but Randall largely sticks to the basics. A dilapidated city holds the world together, but the individual levels lack personality. This is partly due to their similar layouts, but there’s also not a lot of detail in each of them. The enemies aren’t too memorable either, and the same five or six are constant throughout the game. The soundtrack is somehow worse, which varies between unmemorable piano music to earache inducing techno. And again, these same tracks come up over and over again, so you’ll really get to suffer through them.

Randall seemingly disappointed me in different ways each time I booted up the game. I want to like metroidvania games, because the genre can be so malleable and interesting. And yet, here’s this game, which is a sloppy, dull mess. The plot is clumsily told, the gameplay varies between hair-ripping frustrating and sleep-inducing generic, and the technical hiccups are constantly flaring up. I hope We The Force continues to move forward in game development, because there’s a lot that can be learned from their debut effort. Unfortunately, that can’t fix the problems that plague their project now.