Mad Rat Dead - PlayStation 4

I'd never played a Rhythm game before this game. I just happened to stumble on a bit of the soundtrack and gave the game a shot based on that. Hoooooo boy was I not ready for this game. I'm going to try and not be too biased here because this quickly became one of my favourite games of all time but this game features:A fun and heartwearming storyA cute artstyleReally fun rhythm platorming gameplayA SERIOUSLY OUTSTANDING SoundtrackThis game got done dirty by a lack of good advertising outside of Japan (over there they got a whole animated trailer + rap composed for the game), so PLEASE OH PLEASE Play this if you have a PS4/PS5 or a Switch, it deserves so much more love.

Mad Rat Dead is a very, very fun game when you're flowing to the music and executing your button presses correctly with the amazing music. But that fun can turn into frustration when elements don't blend well.In this game, you play as a rat nicknamed "Mad Rat." After given the chance to live on his final day by the "Rat God," his final wish is getting revenge on the scientist who used him.This is a rhythm-platformer. When playing a stage, you have to press a button to do an action (dash and jump for example) to the beat of the song, chaining a combo for as long as you can. It's a game where it's "easy to play, hard to master" since the face buttons and analog stick is all you need to play.Because this is a platformer, you'll be doing a lot of jumping and dodging. Depending on the song, it can be at a decent speed to being very fast, and it's really fun to do. The beat-only movement isn't a problem when platforming for the most part, and it feels really good. If you get hit (one hit deaths, pretty much), you have the ability to rewind some time and correct your mistake, sacrificing your combo in the process. You have to get to the end of the level under the time limit, the time limit being how many beats are available, going down by one every beat.The music is absolutely amazing, the graphics are great and has a lot of personality, the story is interesting, and the gameplay's fun! This is a really good game, and a great game to it's core. And it sucks that the game is dragged down by frustration.-Attacking Enemies: Attacking is like the homing attack from Sonic. Press the jump button and press jump again when targeting an enemy. It's simple and can be fun to use, but it can be awkward to activate, which resulted in me falling to my doom. It's manageable and it's fun to use when it works, but it's worth bringing up.-Inconsistent Beat: Despite the amazing soundtrack, some songs aren't fun to play. In the middle of playing them, the beat changes/slow down, and because of that, the timing changes. The game slows down while doing this, and while it's a reasonable solution, it doesn't solve how painful it is to have your chain ruined because you mistimed the slower beats or wall slide into a pit because the timing is different. But you can get use to it, and this is just a personal complaint. Just annoying when playing for the first few times.-Trial and Error: Again, when the game's flow is great, the game feels and plays great! But I haven't count how many times I died due to hazards showing up out of nowhere or not knowing what to do for a bit. If you play these levels again, you might remember where these hazards are, but it still feels unfair and breaks some of the flow.-Bosses: Excluding one, none of them are fun. This also comes down to the issue of Trial and Error, since there are patterns you're not going to see first time until it's too late. The flow just doesn't feel as good and it's very hard to get combos due to having to dodge, and that can be hard to do even with the beat given.Overall, I still think this is a game worth checking out, and while it might be short (6-7 hours), I'd say it's worth the asking price. It has rough edges, but otherwise, it's a unique game worthy of the genre.

Mad Rat Dead is a super unique game with a lot of charm. You play as a rat that was recently murdered and brought back to life to relive his final day. He chooses to go after the human that killed him with his regained time. The story is actually quite a bit more in depth than i thought it would be. Nothing super deep, but it's ending was actually a very nice twist on the whole theme of death and how one accepts it.The graphics are 2D hand drawn sprites and they have a lot of style and charm to them. The characters are super cute looking, very vibrant and colorful. While some of the backgrounds repeat a little and can be kind of bland looking, it's nothing that bad looking either. For a smaller indie game it looks really nice overall~Obviously with rhythm games you want to know how the music is and it is the most stand out part of the game in my opinion. Pretty much every song is fantastic. All the tunes are very hummable and quite varied in their genres. Most of the songs sound very unique and keep the gameplay fresh.Speaking of gameplay it's probably the hardest thing to describe about the game, but it's quite simple once you get the hang of it. If you've played Crypt of the Necrodancer/ Cadence of Hyrule this might be pretty familiar. Basically you follow the beat of the music by pressing a button to each beat. That button that you press can do a few things like dash forward, jump, ground pound, etc. Basically stuff to keep you moving through the level. It's weird at first for sure, but it's highly rewarding to fly through a level, not missing a single beat. It's challenging but in a fair way that makes you want to keep trying to improve you score and skill. The game is a decent length, about 6 hours on normal for me. There's also a hard mode too, which is probably going to add quite a bit more play time if you want to do everything.Overall, i'd highly recommend this game if you want something different from the standard games that come out. Especially if you like platformers a lot. It's one of the most purely fun, cute, charming games i've played this year.