Calm Before the Storm
On the surface of Petrichor V, the hulk of a space freighter – the UES Contact Light – lies dormant. The massive ship, loaded with countless artefacts and weapons, crash-landed after sustaining critical damage in the planet’s atmosphere, scattering its shipments to every horizon. There was barely time to launch the escape pods, but even if someone did survive reentry, they’d have little hope on this hostile, alien world…
In Risk of Rain, you play as one of a handful of ragtag survivors, fighting your way across a planet strewn with your ship’s cargo. Raiding the containers littering your path, you’ll have to take anything you can to help you in your quest for a way home, from parasitic fungi and the feathers of mythic birds to missile pods and ukuleles crackling with electricity. Risk of Rain 2 is a ground-up reimagining of the original, transitioning from side-scrolling pixel art to a fully three-dimensional perspective, but maintaining a majority of the same characters, mechanics and enemies. Either way: storm’s a-coming…
‘Precious Cargo’ – Premise
In a world of roguelike and -lite type games, Risk of Rain (now a decade old) is defined by a lightly procedurally generated series of levels, permanent upgrades that carry across multiple playthroughs, and a sliding scale of difficulty which increases with time, with enemies attacking in ever-mounting waves the longer you play. This race against the approaching storm (referenced in the game’s deliciously clever title) sees the difficulty increase every five minutes from ‘Very Easy’ and ‘Easy’ through ‘Insane’ and ‘Impossible’ all the way up to ‘I’M COMING FOR YOU’ and, finally, the terrifying ‘HAHAHAHAHA’. At these uppermost levels, the chaos is palpable, the onslaught ceaseless, and the fun-factor immeasurable.
The game walks a Tri-Tip Knife edge of balancing this difficulty with random chance. The quickfire replayability of “just one more go” is paramount in a game where one run can see you stuck with lesser items like Fireworks (launching a piddly volley of rockets whenever you open a chest) and another might bless you with a diamond-tipped Heaven Cracker mining laser. Luckily, with the dozens of items, rotating roster of maps, and veritable rogue’s gallery of characters to play as, every playthrough is truly unique. That’s not even counting the hidden artefacts (the finding of which is an undertaking unto itself) which drastically alter gameplay, offering such effects as allowing you to manually choose the items you secure, or granting a 500% damage boost in exchange for 90% of your maximum health points.
‘Silver Linings’ – Graphics and Score
The original’s pixel art is a wonder to behold. The characteristic sprites pack a huge amount of charm and detail into a handful of bits, and give a crunchy quality to the bristling flame effects and sparking lasers surrounding you. It’s an echo of the golden age of gaming, when everything was handheld and required a hand-crafted approach to the artstyle, with every pixel placed intentionally.
Though the sequel’s 3D graphics are fun in their own way, smooth and block-coloured, I’ve always felt a degree of the original’s visual appeal was lost in the shift. Everything somehow has the same smooth plasticky texture, where the original could be broken up with different styles of pixel shading and overlays. I find it difficult to explain, but in many ways Risk of Rain 2 actually loses graphical fidelity as the smoothness irons out detail.
The soundtrack to both games, however, composed by the brilliant Chris Christodoulou, is spellbinding. The electronic layers somehow pair seamlessly with the game’s themes and narrative, and the games wouldn’t be half as endearing without it. Synthy xylophones pepper your eardrums like hail, and the searing electric guitar crackles like lightning. Christodoulou’s commentary on the album over on YouTube is fascinating if you want a deep-dive).
‘Under the Weather’ – Critiques
I’m aware that the community at large prefers the sequel to the original, so I hope any of them reading this will pardon my opinion on it. When a follow-up (which is really the same game with a graphical overhaul and some new additions) to one of my favourite games of all time was announced, the switch to 3D was not a move I was expecting and, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t one that worked. In a game characterised by its hordes of enemies, the only thing 3D adds besides a graphical “upgrade” (which I personally find far blander than the pixel art of the original and the incredible recent remake, Risk of Rain Returns) is more angles of attack for your foes.
That’s a lie. There is one more thing that it adds: instead of aiming either left or right, 3D means you have a sphere of vision. But a sphere’s angles (and therefore the ways for you to miss your targets) are multiplied from two – left or right – to infinite. There’s a difference between introducing a learning curve, and a fundamental upheaval of what made the original special. It’s also worth noting that for such a simple game, the lack of couch co-op is infuriating. It’s ostensibly because the game wouldn’t perform well at higher levels when the screen is coated in literally hundreds of flaming, flying, flailing enemies, but isn’t that just evidence of another downgrade brought about by the switch to 3D?
As a result, the gunplay in RoR2 feels intrinsically clunky, with the Huntress player-character’s homing attacks being branded ‘easy mode’ by many in the community, whereas I sincerely believe this should have been standard for all characters as they still require you to be in range and looking squarely at your opponent. The Bandit’s ‘Lights Out’ ability, for instance, resetting all your cooldowns on a kill, has a tiny reticule and therefore a huge margin for error with zero auto-aim; missing this attack is immensely dissatisfying. Really, that word sums up my experience with Risk of Rain 2 as compared to its predecessor.
Oh, some critiques for the original game? Uh… No notes
No, I suppose I can scold my darling for the trouble I had with it when I first started playing it. I’m fairly sure I remember playing Risk of Rain when it first released – possibly in a Humble Indie Game Bundle for a heavily discounted price – and dismissing it as dumb and difficult, so that says something against ease of entry. I’m fairly sure I’m not imagining this, because I distinctly remember the on-screen difficulty slider. But when I came back to the game, it hooked me completely and the rest is history.
Both games also suffer a little from sluggish starts. Traversal is a pain before you unlock some jet-packs or anti-gravity boots, but I find this especially frustrating in the sequel, considering the huge 3D environments and multiple levels and criss-crossing paths. Balancing backtracking to get items you’ve missed now that you have the loot to purchase them with advancing the game world to reach the final boss is, of course, the single key point of the gameplay that the whole loop revolves around. But it’s also tricky to master, and some levels suffer more than others when striking the balance.
‘Eye of the Hurricane’ – Final Thoughts
Spanning ten years of consistent downloadable content and developer support, the Risk of Rain games occupy a unique space in their genre and gaming in general. The first stands the test of time as a whirlwind of fun and one of the original roguelites in a now oft-polluted and overdone genre (as well as remaining one of my favourite games in history, over a decade later). The second is still being updated: at the time of writing, the Seekers of the Storm DLC was just announced, and the previous, Survivors of the Void, was just added to the console version. Both games maintain a vibrant modding scene and thriving community to this day. Whilst I view the original Risk of Rain as an all time classic, I envy those who do love the sequel, and hope they’ll forgive me when I say Risk of Rain 2 serves as proof that lightning truly doesn’t strike the same spot twice.
