Rick Henderson Assessment | TheXboxHub

It might be a type of character check. If I instructed you a sport was referred to as ‘Rick Henderson’, what sort of sport do you assume it will be? I’m going for an action-platformer, which might be me exhibiting my age and channelling Rick Harmful. Maybe it brings to thoughts an arty strolling simulator, or a point-and-click. 

Method down on the backside of that record can be a hardcore house shoot ’em up. Nobody goes to name their R-Kind-killer ‘Rick Henderson’. Are they?

Nicely, stone the crows, Rick Henderson is definitely an area shooter. An excellent house shooter, at that. The dissonance shouldn’t trouble us, nevertheless it does.

Rick Henderson is a forty-three yr previous, chubby house pilot on the helm of a spaceship, going through off in opposition to fleets of enemies earlier than an end-of-level boss. Rick isn’t thinking about issues like story or cutscenes: he’s all concerning the pure, arcade taking pictures and the rating chase. It’s as pure a online game as you may count on. 

Leap into Rick Henderson (nonetheless doesn’t sound correct), and your first alternative is sport mode. There’s a Normal Countless Mode, which thrusts you right into a collection of sport ‘loops’ (simply the sport’s marketing campaign, performed time and again), a Laborious Countless Mode, and a Boss Raid Mode. It’s a skinny providing in shoot ’em up phrases, particularly as Rick Henderson is dishonest: the Laborious Countless Mode is extra an issue setting, and the Boss Raid Mode is only a copy-paste of all of the bosses within the sport. We’d say that there’s a mode-and-a-half right here. 

Then you definitely’re selecting your pilot as a result of – shock horror – it isn’t really the Rick Henderson present. You can even select Ben X9 (which we assume is a Ben 10 joke), who’s an alien vampire, and Thoraxx, who’s the spit of Bebop from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This alternative is extra necessary than you may count on. Not solely are there base variations to statistical data like velocity and the variety of life factors, however the totally different characters have specials if you press Y on the pad. Rick has a frankly horrible decoy, whereas Bebop will get a useful screen-wipe within the type of artillery. Ben X9 will get the flexibility to teleport forwards, which is alright, we suppose. 

Then you definitely’re into the sport’s loop, and Rick Henderson’s high quality shines by. It’s, within the fundamental stuff of its taking pictures, actually quite good. The ship strikes lithely, the collision detection is precise and the bullets have an effect and heft that makes you are feeling highly effective. The foundational stuff is on level. 

Transfer into the weapons and issues are even higher. You might have three core weapons handy, fired with X, A and B. X is your conventional bullets: the all-rounder that fires in a straight line and offers the identical injury to all unit sorts. A is your power weapon, which offers injury to shields, and fires randomly such as you have been pissing bubbles. B is an artillery weapon, and it carves into armoured, quite than shielded, enemies, which is especially true of bosses. 

What this implies is that you just’re continually switching between weapons relying on the enemies which were spat out. Matching the weapon to the enemy is enjoyable sufficient, and retains you in your toes. However the true magic comes from the weapon power-ups. Every of those three weapons will be swapped out with 9 various weapons, totalling twenty-seven. These may have been formulaic and, to be honest, just a few are. However so a lot of them are imaginative and positively beckon you to check them out. 

Our favorite was the Randomiser, which is sort of a pinball multiball in shoot ’em up kind. Bullets randomly bounce across the display, and you’ll hearth off so many that you just’re given a type of bullet armour. A sniper-like weapon creates a reticule that can be utilized to one-shot enemies. Chain weapons, channeled lasers and ricochet bullets all make an look. It’s an overstuffed arsenal, and it’s fabulous. 

Ranges are comparatively easy, in shoot ‘em up phrases, with waves of mobs coming and going in several permutations and patterns. However Rick Henderson has a mild randomisation algorithm which signifies that waves seem barely in another way on every playthrough. Bosses have a number of phases, however name on them randomly too. It signifies that you’re in your toes: you possibly can’t memorise ranges within the method that you just may with different video games. If something, we’d have favored extra of it: Rick Henderson begs to be replayed, however the sequence of bosses by no means adjustments. We’d have taken some boss- or level-variance. 

The bosses are a tad nameless – nearly totally spaceships with simplistic silhouettes – however they’re enjoyable to struggle, they usually’re telegraphed extraordinarily nicely. You’ll be able to quickly study to grasp them when you have the endurance and talent. 

Nevertheless it’s what occurs after they’re downed that we love. They explode in a bathe of shields (progressing your rank, and subsequently your factors and achievements) and gems, however additionally they supply one among 4 totally different perks. You may go for smaller advantages with no downsides, or greater advantages with plentiful downsides. We cherished creating builds that emphasised rating, at the price of issues like well being and defences. We have been a rating machine made out of polystyrene.

There’s little or no else to complicate issues. As talked about, Rick Henderson isn’t one for story, so that you don’t get something to chew on by way of cutscenes or endings. We’d have taken some narrative color, however we didn’t significantly miss it when it wasn’t there. A ‘graze’ counter accumulates if you narrowly miss a bullet, and it may be spent on good bombs that obliterate your opponents. 

What all of this quantities to is an especially succesful shooter with a cargo-full of concepts. We will not be on board with that title, however all the pieces else is supremely stable, from the arsenal of weapons to the end-of-level perk system. We had a gormless grin on our faces as we performed it, and you’ll’t ask for greater than that.

Rick Henderson is just a little slice of arcade-shooting goodness, and typically that’s greater than sufficient.

You should buy Rick Henderson from the Xbox Retailer