Ever since Retro City Rampage launched in the US, creator Brian Provinciano has been hard at work fixing the game and making it better for everyone. All his hard work has culminated in patch 1.02 for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, which adds all of the following fixes and tweaks:
- Added Tips Screens
- displayed if the player fails missions repeatedly
- Shop location icons
- shop icons added to the full size pause menu map
- Added COFFEE JITTER SPEED Power
- drink coffee to play the game at 2X speed for 30 seconds (makes Biffman tailing mission quicker)
- The game now runs at double speed for 30 seconds when drinking coffee making the car tailing mission half the length. On top of that, there’s now a checkpoint in the middle making it even easier. This was also on the todo list but cut before the game was released due to the tight schedule. Oh well.
Vehicles
- Faster Cars
- cars now have much faster top speeds making it quicker to get around town
- Persistent Cars
- Most recent car no longer disappears when starting a mission or restarting from some checkpoints
- Being one guy handling everything from the programming and design to business, production and more, this was originally left out of the game due to the risk of blowing up the test matrix. Unpredictable car positions during scripted events could’ve led to a lot of bugs, but I’ve now accounted for these and had proper QA on it to verify.
- Convenience Cars
- Fast cars conveniently spawn on missions where you must travel longer distances, some with nitro
- I did my best to do this in the first place, but not every mission was spruced up with them, and as I’ve now learned, those holes are where where some reviewers eyes gravitate to. They won’t notice that many missions have them, just that some don’t.
Overhauled Missions
- Sweat Bomber platforming levels completely overhauled
- jumping/moving no longer requires acceleration, allowing players to jump distances from a standing position
- wider platforms, taller triggers
- increased visibility of soul boosters
- clearer perspective
- rhythm game-style tutorial bar now displays buttons to press on first level after repeated failures
- can be skipped after three deaths (but the player won’t earn the playable character or challenge
- The biggest thing that I overlooked here (despite running playtests prior to release) was that the player needed to run and jump to make it over wide gaps. Many players it turns out tried to do these jumps from a standing position making the levels seem impossible. I’ve now gone overboard, completely reworking the entire thing. Worst case scenario, if a player is still having trouble they can skip over these levels. Doing so simply won’t award them the playable character and arcade challenge.
- Side missions – added depth
- increased the challenge on the Trailer Park and Milky’s missions (they now require more strategy to beat)
- RCR included some simple side missions which were very GTA-esque with simple objectives. Fun Fact: These were among the first missions ever created for the game, before the final story was written. Once the game became more ambitious with more in depth missions these didn’t quite fit. However, rather than cut them I decided to leave them in as optional side quests. While I hoped that everyone would enjoy the overall package and see these as extras, the sad state is that some critics tug on any loose string that they find and they spotlighted these admittedly weaker missions, some even using them to “sum up” the game. As a result, I’ve reworked them and added more depth to bring them closer to the level of the rest. Be warned though, they’re now much harder and require more skill to beat, as is the case for many of the optional missions. The purpose of most optional missions is to give the advanced players more challenge.
- Tap ‘dat AS5 stage overhauled
- faster to beat but more skill required (must also dodge projectiles)
- Flaming projectiles now shoot out of the tanks when a barrel is tossed in, requiring the player to dodge in addition to throwing. Another thing that was on the todo list but cut due to time constraints. When releasing a game you always need to pick what’s on the chopping block and sometimes pick the wrong things. Lesson learned. In addition, the player only needs to throw in half the number of barrels making it a much faster challenge.
Tutorials & Balancing
- Stomp and Dodge Tutorials Added
- emphasizing the importance of stomping and jumping in the game (which are required to beat certain missions)
- trains the player how to avoid police cars trying to run them down
- Many story missions significantly improved
- more checkpoints, health pick ups and faster parked vehicles to speed up travel
- Including but not limited to: Holy Secret Identification, Guilty Conscience, Drunk Trialing, Streets of Urban Bouncing, Pawn That Noob’s TV, Loose Change Laundry Caper, Super Stomp Shenanigans, Sweat Time, Tap ‘dat AS5
- Castle boss now easier
- shields dropped which render you immune from wreaking ball attacks
- more walls/floor added reducing chance of falling into gears
- Prison stomp now easier
- split into two parts with a checkpoint in the middle
Other
- French Translation Updated
- Police Siren Adjusted
- Misc Bug Fixes & Other Tweaks
Does this patch make you want to go back and play RCR? Let us know in the comments section below.
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