Rescue Party: Live! – Review
Live from the scene, we are reporting about this curious case! As you can see, we find ourselves trying out a game named Rescue party: Live! All manner of rescuing is going on here, as disasters just keep happening all around us. Oh no! An explosion! Luckily there are up to four firefighters and other helping hands available to help out. Let’s follow them closely and see what will happen. Will they bring this story to a good end?
Story
As an earthquake strikes and a city is covered in chaos and ruin, a band of heroes without capes comes to the rescue. Rescue Party: Live! presents us with a team of rescuers, including a captain, an intern, firemen, a reporter, and even a dog. While their characters don’t get much introduction, most of these characters are playable characters that you can choose to go rescue NPCs in distress with. As the game progresses and you unlock new levels, short conversations occur to explain what is going on. Due to this title being a party game that’s all about the gameplay, the characters do not get fleshed out, nor is there any big story to uncover.
Graphics
Rescue Party: Live! has cute graphics. It looks like the game has Japanese influences with the names characters have, but also because of the style of the faces that are drawn in a kawaii style. The models of characters and environments are reminiscent of childrens’ toys and kids’ morning shows, making the game quite attractive to look at. At the same time, explosions and other disasters happen, so for very young gamers it might be a bit too stressful, aside from the game probably being too hard anyway. Even though the graphical design of Rescue Party: Live! is spot on, we can’t ignore the fact the game looks partially like an Overcooked! clone. Something that Overcooked definitely did better was the clear communicative style that made the gameplay very accessible, even if Team17’s game was at times very brutal. Rescue Party: Live! suffers from an overload of clutter and unclear communications of object graphics at times, which can hold back the gameplay by i.e. not knowing where to go or what to do.
Sound
The sound design is quite good for this game. Some tracks are a bit simple, royalty-free sounding, while others are more complex and fun to listen to. Rescue Party: Live! also has that annoying (but great) effect where the music starts to change to a higher pitch and speed as you near the end of the timer for the level. This, of course, makes the end of the level a lot more intense. The game could have used a few additional sound effects to spice things up. Sure, the basics are all covered, but we are missing the icing on the cake to make the sound quality truly outstanding.
Gameplay
As mentioned above, Rescue Party: Live! feels a bit like an Overcooked! clone at first sight. In these arcade-like party games, chaos is master and you need to work together to get the maximum out of a level. There is a difference though. When playing Overcooked! it was all about making dishes and serving them, while Rescue Party: Live! asks you to save survivors and bring them to a rescue point. Of course, there is more to explore than just different environments, the gameplay mechanics change a bit from time to time.
Rescue Party: Live! combines objective-oriented gameplay. In most cases, this involves the rescuing of civilians while having to do some pathfinding. The rescuing of civilians happens by picking up the correct available items and bringing them to the corresponding civilian. The pathfinding happens by i.e. putting down ladders to cross muddy waters, but sometimes also by changing up the core gameplay. In the case of the latter, you do not have to rescue as many civilians as possible, but you need to round up a select few before you can finish and exit the level. We applaud these level-building and gameplay changes as it makes the game more than “just another clone”. The game becomes increasingly challenging as you progress, and it will have you work together with your friends as best as you can.
On the other hand, playing the game solo does not feel nice at all. We would advise you to play this with friends for sure, as playing solo means you need to switch between two characters all the time which results in an inefficient mess. This becomes quite apparent during assignments that you’re supposed to do with another player simultaneously. While the game is fun with two players, as a solo experience it truly fails. Controlling the characters feels stiff, and it gives you less control over the movements they make. Even with the gameplay changes here and there, the meat of the game lies in handling the same task over and over again, which eventually gets quite old.
Conclusion
Rescue Party: Live! is a solid arcade-like party game. It might borrow a page or two from the Overcooked! games, but it has its own unique quirks that differentiate it from the competition. As a whole, the game is quite charming, even though it doesn’t have that much meat on its bones. The gameplay gets repetitive after a while, but the way some levels are constructed is clever and it’s a lot of fun to rescue people. We do advise playing this game with friends, as the solo experience is simply not fun.
Rescue Party: Live! - Review,
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