Rating: 7 out of 10
The entire metroidvania sub-genre is living in a perpetual shadow as we await the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Rusty Rabbit is the latest attempt to fill the void. It’s also the first foray into the genre from developer Nitroplus, who is mostly known for visual novels with adult themes rather than relatively light hearted action platformers. Unfortunately, I think a metroidvania might have been too big a carrot for Rusty Rabbit to chew.
The games takes place in a Rock and Rule-esque universe where humanity has been wiped out by our own stupidity and anthropomorphic animals have taken up in our place. This time it’s rabbits, including our hero Rusty Stamp. Piloting his aging mech Junkster, Rusty makes his living scavenging into a mountain factory facility that is still operated by humanity’s last mechanical servants. As the game opens, he ends up reluctantly taking a group of adventurers under his wing as he investigates the disappearance of his archeologist daughter.
Rusty is a fun character, and certainly much more enjoyable than most metroidvania protagonists, who tend to be tragic, gothic figures. Instead, we get a cartoonishly grizzled old engineer with moderate at best social skills but an appropriate heart of gold. Voice actor Yong Yea infuses Rusty with big dad energy, with all the good and bad that entails. Regardless, he’s a well-rounded character with the development you’d expect from a company that perfected the visual novel.
He’s honestly most of the reason I kept playing the game for ten hours. Rusty’s daughter was as headstrong and stubborn as her dad when she ran away from home to pursue her studies into the “giants” that left behind all the machinery. At first, Rusty is slightly embittered but respectful of her choice. Once it becomes apparent that she might be in trouble, he slowly starts to rethink his views on life and rekindles his desire to be her dad. This all takes place through a set of terminals where she has been leaving messages, a subtle but powerful device that feels akin to cautious attempts at reconciliation following familial strife during COVID.
I might be projecting a bit there.
The rest of the story is somewhat mediocre. The NPCs Rusty helps out are forgettable and nowhere near as well written. You learn more about the members of the town through a diner sidequest, but I started skipping through the scenes pretty early in my playthrough as they just weren’t that interesting. There’s also a sidequest where Rusty restores old cars, and these are damn near painful to read. Imagine if Jordan Peterson hosted Car Talk. Watching Rusty go on for nine pages of monologue about what different sizes of fuel tanks meant to him spiritually was maybe too much dad for me to take.
The biggest sin in the game, though, is movement. Rusty and Junkster are cute as hell and about as much fun to pilot around the map. Not every metroidvania character has to be lightning quick. Blasphemous and Salt & Sanctuary are both kind of plodding, but they are at least accurate. Junkster is a mess. I careened into dozens of enemies simply trying to edge off a platform to get on the proper level to attack. Jumping often takes you nowhere where you intended to go, and attacks will drive you right into an enemy’s claws. At one point I remarked to my wife that Junkster moved like a pirate that had replaced his peg leg with a low-quality dildo. It’s not fun to play.
It doesn’t matter that much because the game is also super easy. I was eight hours into the game before I died even once, and only the Rust Octopus boss gave me much of a challenge. It’s very much Baby’s First Metroidvania. That’s not a bad thing. Frankly, the genre is oversaturated with difficult titles and could use a few more introductory outings like Rusty Rabbit, but even the bosses are unmemorable.
The game is just not that well crafted. I soft-locked myself thanks to a lack of farmable materials in the late game (save your hydraulic cylinders). The weapon crafting system involves randomly retrying to make the same thing over and over, while adding upgrades is also random but requires finite plasma cores. I blasted through most of my stock upgrading the drill arm because I thought the power boosts would enable me to get through walls in secret areas.
Speaking of, exploring this game was extremely frustrating, which is about the largest sin a metroidvania can commit. Normally, you get a new movement skill, then you can go back and explore areas that were blocked off. For some reason, Rusty Rabbit seals its bonus areas away with multiple layers of obstacles. I would complete a difficult platforming puzzle with my new tool, only to find a set of bricks I couldn’t destroy with my current weapon. Considering that the prizes were generally more items for the car restoration sidequest, it felt even more pointless.
There are parts of the exploration I loved. Rusty can color code the map with an early skill tree unlock, so remembering where those breakable objects were to go back to later was a snap. The game map is very big and detailed. Considering the last game like this I played was Animal Well and its small, pixelated map, a bit of helpful hand holding was a nice surprise. Lots of easy to access fast travel spots were definitely appreciated.
Frankly, I feel Rusty Rabbit just needed more time in the oven from a design perspective. There is a fun game here underneath the grime. I never got bored playing it, even when it felt more like a chore than it should have.
One last thing. The rabbits in this game have a religion entirely based around Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit books, including a crucifix that holds Peter’s blue jacket. The religious authority actually plays a very large part in the game’s story, and it’s never not hilarious from beginning to end. Aside from Rusty himself, the church shenanigans kept me playing well past the point of frustration.
However, I’ll be setting the game aside until some online guide writer figures out how to farm hydraulic cylinders because I’m not desperate enough for Silksong to start my game file over from the beginning in Rusty Rabbit.
Rusty Rabbit is available Thursday, April 17 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC. $19.99
