AAARGH!

The Good
Rampage is an action game that allows the player to demolish buildings while taking control of a monster, who can also beat up their opponents. After it found success in the arcades, there was no doubt that copycats would appear. Sculptured Software's Aaargh! was one of these copycats, and what a damn fine game it is.

As a cyclops or a sexy lizard in an ancient world where monsters really did exist, your job is to wreak havoc on buildings until you find a egg. You can destroy buildings by either punching them at different angles or setting them on fire. Stopping you from achieving your goal is both a human-controlled catapult that moves left or right, shooting fireballs at you, and giant mosquitoes that try to bring you down with their fatal sting. Some buildings leave power-ups that boosts your energy or fire-breathing abilities. Once you manage to get the egg, you go head-to-head with your opponent and fight for it. Get five eggs in a row and it's off to get the golden egg and a chance to rule the land.

I liked the various locations that you have to fight in, including the banks of the river and the Egyptian-like location. The buildings also look nice. On the screen where you fight your opponent, the eggs are nicely laid out on the points of the star. The animations are smooth as well. The highlight is knocking down buildings and watch the villagers scurry out of them, then eating as many villagers as you can.

As you bash and crack your way through each location, the sound provides some atmosphere to the game. I particularly liked when monster says “Food” as it is being picked up, or when you make a triumphant roar as you hold the egg up after winning the fight.

I like to think that the game has an invisible time limit, because when you spend too long in a certain location, the mosquitoes go faster and faster and appear on screen more frequently. I usually wasted a lot of time destroying the catapult in each location, but I got around this by destroying at least three structures before dealing with it.

After you have completed the game, you just go back to the first location but still retain your score. The game does not have a high score table, so you might want to write it down, in case you happen to run out of energy. You can always go back and try to beat your previous score again. All of this is no problem for me as I can mastered the game quite easily.

The Bad
No matter what character you play as, Cyclops or Lizard, both sound the same (ie: The Lizard doesn't sound like a lizard). The major problem with the game are the controls. Since you use the fire button to spit fire as well as punch, I accidentally spat instead of punch a majority of the time. The only saving grace is to actually press fire when moving left or right.

The Bottom Line
So in conclusion, Sculptured Software's take on Rampage is a pretty decent game, except that you don't just go knocking down buildings for the sheer pleasure of it, you have to find an egg and fight for it. The graphics are great, and the digitized sound gives the game a bit of atmosphere to it. The only thing I didn't like are the controls, although they are easy to master once you played at least three times.