Shakedown: Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Shakedown: Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab VBlank Entertainment’s Retro City Rampage was a remarkable indie jab at video game giant Grand Theft Auto. Featuring everything from high-octane action to time-travelling shenanigans, it was a game that got everything right. It was smart, funny, gorgeous… in short, pretty much everything you’d want in a video game. After years of delays and an even longer development, you’d hope that Rampage’s successor Shakedown: Hawaii would be a grand return for VBlank. Unfortunately, it never hits the gold standard that was set before it. ROMSLAB.COM Best Switch Games

Shakedown Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

From a purely presentational standpoint, Shakedown: Hawaii is vastly superior to its predecessor. While Rampage’s 8-bit visuals were appropriately amiable, Hawaii instead opts for a gorgeously detailed 16-bit aesthetic. While a pixel-art world will never be as immersive as the fully 3-D landscapes of Red Dead or GTA, Hawaii’s compact world is so detail-rich that you could imagine being there. Fine details are plentiful: every corner of 16-bit Hawaii has something to gawp at, even if you’re just flattening pedestrians on your way to a mission. Civilians stroll around taking selfies, streets are filled with varied NPCs, trees sway and puddles cut as you drive through them.

Another rampage

There’s no denying the attention to detail here. Most of the game’s gorgeous objects also have numerous states as you’ll inevitably destroy them at some point during your playthrough. That lovely-looking brick wall? You’re going to drive right through it. That tiny shop? You’re going to burn it down to the ground. VBlank’s series has seen a growth spurt, not just in its visuals but also its story. While the original game was an amazing tongue-in-cheek jab at every pop culture reference in the past thirty years, Shakedown: Hawaii drops that entirely. Set thirty years after Rampage, the player character has evolved into the disgruntled CEO of the failing Feeble Corporation. Ghost Blade HD Switch NSP

Shakedown Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

As you’re struggling to keep your company afloat, you’ll resort to a life of crime and unethical business practices to rise from the ashes and take out your competitor, Featherbottom. The plot here isn’t complex at all, but that’s because any meaningful story beats are cast away in favour of pure comedic moments. Humour may be subjective, but Shakedown: Hawaii doesn’t supply its comedy as cannily as its predecessor did; while Rampage drew its humour from parody and outlandish situations, this time the laughs purely stem from the player character’s inability to keep up with modern conveniences.

GRAPHICS

A lot of the jabs here are fair game. Large day one patches and console UI s deserve to be heavily scrutinized, so too do egregious store-specific credit cards, but most of the jokes here are simply of the “old man yelling at a cloud” variety. That is the point; the character you’re playing as is hilariously out of touch, but Shakedown: Hawaii never evolves. Instead, you’re stuck with that one joke throughout most of the story. There are some chuckle-worthy scenes but, for the most part, it gets stale quickly and the dialogue is never as witty or clever as it was in Rampage. Ghost of Tsushima Directors: Cut PS5

Shakedown Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

With the world being blown up to four times the size of the original, VBlank has made sure there’s something other than mindless-albeit-fun violence to do within it. Opening the game’s map will show the many purchasable buildings which you’ll have to acquire, upgrade and perform the titular shakedowns in. Unfortunately, this is the most prominent part of the game. Every few in-game minutes you’ll be granted daily revenue from your properties which immediately gets dumped into more properties. Once you purchased a building, you can upgrade it from a list of thirteen bonuses you’ll discover through story missions.

Gameplay

Each building adds more revenue to purchase, yet more buildings and upgrades simply add a percentage increase to that revenue. It’s a mechanic that never evolves, it only gets more tedious. You’re simply buying a thing from a list of things that only serves the purpose of allowing you to buy even more things. It’s mindless busywork. As a game that ridicules the worst of consumerism, Shakedown: Hawaii adopts one of the most reviled aspects of modern gaming: a Ubisoft-style checklist style of completion. There are 81 properties to shakedown, all of which come down to performing one of six different activities: eliminate gang members, scare away customers, cut off someone’s hair. Ghost Sync Switch NSP

Shakedown Hawaii Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Escape from an underground jail, steal a shipment or drive away with the shop owner on the hood of your car. Since the shakedowns are placed in large clusters on the game’s map, you’ll most likely be tackling them in groups at a time, highlighting the repetitious nature of the signature mechanic. In between shakedowns and story missions, you’ll pop into your map and purchase a few properties. Maybe you’ll save up for an expensive building and dump all of your money into upgrading that – it’ll make a good bonus for your daily revenue. Within Hawaii, there are hundreds of buildings to buy, each with thirteen upgrades that you’ll have to manually apply. It’s mindless repetition.

Add-ons (DLC): Shakedown: Hawaii Switch NSP