RICO

Thanks to years of watching crime shows, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what it takes to solve a case. Not that I would be a good detective, but I do know that you're supposed to look for evidence, consider motives, interview suspects and piece everything together to form an air-tight case. The new game RICO, on the other hand, has a slightly different approach to solving the case. We don't dust for prints or check surveillance footage, because these cops are ready to kick down the door and shoot every man standing in the way. It's a violent shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never approach that seems like the wrong message to be sending right now, but the random levels and intense action sure is fun.

If you're looking for a deep story from RICO, then you need to go elsewhere. This is an action game that sets a RICO agent up against the mob with explosive results. The goal is to go from level to level looking for evidence. And by "evidence" I mean that you basically shoot up an apartment complex, seize a bunch of documents and then get out before you go swimming with the fishes, if you catch my drift. If you manage to make it out alive, your reward is jumping into another tense firefight where you search each room in hopes of stomping out the mafia.

What RICO lacks in story it more than makes up for with replayability. This is the kind of game where the levels are random and when you die, you have to start over from the beginning. While I know this sub-genre has its detractors, I think it works well here. The random levels and objectives help keep each session fresh, even when you're essentially doing the same thing every time. The office buildings, construction sites and mob hangouts are all just nondescript buildings, and I like that I never know what I'm getting myself in for with each new case.

The buildings may change, but the objectives and obstacles stay the same. At first, it's all about smashing down doors and killing gangsters, but there comes a point where you'll need to take out certain targets, destroy computers to open up doors and even defuse bombs. It's these explosives that end up causing the most damage, because not cutting the wire in time will kill you and your chances of cracking the case. This is easily the most frustrating part of the game, since we're given very little time to track down several randomly placed bombs. It's too easy to walk into the wrong room, get caught up in a lengthy firefight and then not have enough time to locate all of the explosives. One missed wire cut and it's back to the beginning.

And this is ultimately the biggest sin of RICO. It's not just that it's sometimes hard to track down bombs (especially on the higher difficulties), but rather that the game is filled with cheap deaths. With so much going on and enemies coming from all sides, it's common to take a lot of unnecessary hits from enemies that should be easy to kill. Part of the reason for this is because there aren't a lot of things to hide behind and use for cover. We have the advantage of a few seconds of slow motion going into each room, but things can quickly spiral out of control, even if you have a good plan of attack.

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The way I tend to judge this type of game is by whether or not I want to jump back in after I die. In the case of RICO, I was ready to have another crack at the bad guys. Part of the reason is because you're always earning experience points that will unlock perks that will carry over between sessions, but the main reason is because it's just so much fun. Even when I felt like I died in a cheap or unfair way, I was never so salty that I didn't want to play it again. I kept wanting one more crack at the case, even if that meant staying up way past my bedtime.

Apart from the bombs and occasional cheap deaths, the game also suffers from a few troubling technical problems. I ran into a couple sessions where I couldn't solve a case because the mission didn't have enough evidence to find. The good news is that you can always play a different mission to get around the buggy levels, but this is something the developers will need to address.

I also found that the game was incredibly repetitive. While the action is certainly fun, RICO doesn't hit a lot of different notes; it basically just does the one thing over and over. Don't get me wrong, that one note is great, but there were times when I wanted a little more variety. Thankfully, there are secondary missions that want you to get a certain amount of headshots, kill people while sliding and other challenges. Those help to keep things fresh, but the one-note action still becomes monotonous over time.

Complaints aside, there is a lot about RICO that I really like. I'm a big fan of the clean cel-shaded graphics and think that it brings a style that keeps the violence from becoming too gritty. I'm also a big fan of the co-op multiplayer modes, and can see friends spending a lot of time cracking these cases together. And I can't forget about all of the weapons and upgrades I can buy throughout the mission, allowing me to customize my guns in a lot of exciting ways. The truth is, there's so much about this game that I dig that I sometimes forget about the occasionally buggy levels and cheap deaths. And maybe that's for the best.