Intro
The year was 1985, compact discs were introduced in the US, Microsoft released Windows 
1.0 and Konami produced Rush ‘N Attack. For its time, it was a great game that was enjoyed by many. Konami seeks to recapture some of this classic glory in the form of a revamped 3D sequel.
Rush ‘N Attack Ex-Patriot takes place after the Cold War and is played through the eyes of Sid Marrow (call sign “Wolf Spider” ) who is trying to locate a abandoned member of “Harvest”. Harvest is a secret branch of the CIA that was trying to infiltrate the Soviet weapons program during the cold war, but was unsuccessful.
Once I jumped into the game I enjoyed the throwback to the old 2D side scrolling games of the past. The graphics had been beefed up and were enjoyable. The colors are bright and the background and foreground are well detailed.
After taking in the graphics and shaking the joyful feelings of retro gaming it was time to get down to business. I quickly found the controls to be very simple and straight forward. There was a noticeable delay between movement and jumping combinations causing you to have to time any running just so in order to complete simple run and jump maneuvers. This became more and more annoying throughout the game.
At first, the stealth attacks you learn to take down the enemy are really cool, but you learn the extent of Marrow’s abilities early, and the lack of variety during the rest of the game is a little disappointing. There are some different weapons that are dropped by enemies that are fun to use but they are limited by a certain amount of ammo and do not last long.
Rush ’N Attack has three different and very large environments for users to play in: a Siberian prison complex, a bio-weapons laboratory, and a nuclear weapons base. Within each area, players have to complete a variety of missions. For me the three different environments all looked the same and became very boring.
I was very excited about a new 3D side scrolling adventure game. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that I was expecting; the throwback to the past was fun at first but the game quickly became disappointing. Between the lack of in depth, environments and repetitive combat the game became a lot of sitting and waiting to attack instead of stealth combat. Every so often we feel a little nostalgic and want to relive games of our past but we quickly learn why the games have evolved. Konami tried to revamp an old style game and unfortunately Rush ’N attack Ex-Patriot isn’t bringing this style of gameplay back any time soon. A disappointing return to say the least.
