You rascals! (Raskulls review)

This game is pretty unique, it has a blend of Mr Driller and racing, something that hasn’t been attempted before, to my knowledge at least.
And to be honest, there’s a good reason that no one has bothered; because it is a bad idea.

They try, bless them. They try and they do manage to kind of create a decent formula, but not a great one. There is a simple story, some humour and some other game modes.

We start the game watching evil rat-pirates needing fuel, they are called “Pirats” and they intend to steal a shiny stone to get the fuel back, a shiny stone that you don’t want them to have, one that you need for reasons never explained. The game acknowledges that it doesn’t explain this, and it avoids it in a humourous way but to be honest it just seemed lazy.

The “Raskulls” find out about this and hatch a plan to stop them, not a very good one but that is part of the humour, humour that we see carry through the game and break it up quite a bit, into more bite size chunks.

Sadly the chunks are all quite similar, quite very similar. To the point that by the second chapter I had become very bored, and only endured the painfully dull gameplay so I could write about it.

The game has a few gametypes.

A racing one:
Race to the finish by deleting blocks and, running. This can be against AI or making a few laps on a map.
A sculpting one:
Make shapes, then delete them.
A bomb one:
Delete blocks, and then reach bombs and deactivate them, by hitting them?
And finally:
A more limited version of the bomb one, you must get antiques on to a platform without them breaking. By deleting blocks under them in a way to stop them falling too far.

So it may seem quite variable but they’re just pretty samey and dull.
The worst one of this in my opinion is the sculpting one, there is a picture in the top right of the shape you must make, it’s gridded off (Example: A vertical line that’s four blocks long) But! The game doesn’t section off the blocks other then that, so it becomes really awkward and annoying to make the shape, and then to just destroy it seems like a waste.

Just to top it all off the game has a stupid difficulty curve, the first chapter can be done in less than half an hour, the second, same again. And then the third is practically impossible! The third being the last set, which shows how short the game is. There are a few side missions and such, but there isn’t enough to really push the game into something decent.

So, to conclude, short, adorable, fun, for a bit.
Then just a bit boring.
Then even more boring.
But you can get funky avatar awards!

Games: Raskulls, Platforms: Android, Genres: Action, Publishers: Microsoft Game Studios, Developers: Halfbrick