RICO Review: Book ‘Em, Danno

“Kick Doors and Shoot Men”, a quote that you’ll encounter often, perfectly sums up what this game is all about. Ground Shatter and Rising Star Games come together to bring the pseudo-70s ‘Buddy Cop’ Co-op Shooter, RICO. The player is transported to the city of San Amaro where crime is rampant and the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) squad is on the job. Pick your officer of choice, set up your loadout and get the job done, no matter how messy. With all the over the top action, is RICO right for the case or is it a loose cannon?

What’s With All The Bullets
RICO doesn’t have much to present story wise as it’s very much keen to acta non verba. There is however just enough to fiddle with here. Karen Redfern acts as an interim director for the RICO Squad, a shoot first and ask question later division of gung-ho officers who get the job done. Cleaning up the city of San Amaro is the goal and with a bunch of broken doors and lots of ammo, the squad is getting it done. With a bit of information regarding every cop’s background, the player is given just enough to know their motivations and objective to avoid being left without narrative. Though a bit disappointing to not have much more depth given the iconic influences the title draws from, it’s evident that the story was never meant to be the star of the show.

Bang! Bang!

What is the star of the show is RICO’s over the top action. Pulling no punches, it isn’t afraid to flaunt its intentions of being all about making you feel like an absolute badass while you clear rooms of enemies in both hectic and messy ways. Its gameplay can be best described as a culmination of Hotline Miami, with its Vice driven world and its be quick or be dead approach and Payday: The Heist, with a similar aesthetic and gameplay.

Players begin by choosing one of the various game modes: Quick, which launches the player into a randomized mission of their chosen game mode; Case, which for all purposes, serves as RICO’s Campaign/Story Mode in which players work through operation by operation in a connected web to take down a crime boss. Clearing operations and completing presented objectives will reward players with Merits that serve as a currency system to replenish their health, armor and revive vials (which is a must in between cases), or to expand and customize their arsenal. Players must be quick or be good for managing their time, as they only have 24 hours on in-game time to complete a case or face failure. Finally, The Daily, which serves to compete with others via leaderboard or team up with another to tackle on what RICO has to offer. Most importantly however, it awards RP, currency used to purchase cosmetics for the players arsenal.

Players can tackle through 3 different operations, varying by the games 3 difficulties (Easy, Medium and Hard), each awarding more RP than the last. Killhouse, aptly described by its name, requires clearing a certain amount of rooms with enemies waiting within. Lastly, Lockdown, which serves as a horde mode, with unlimited enemies coming for the player.

RICO’s gameplay is very simplistic in nature. Pick a loadout and begin breaching room by room, clearing groups of enemies completing a handful of different objectives. Leveling up provides players with ‘Traits’ which serve as perks, with one awarded every level. Capping at 14 maximum levels, there’s a variety spanning from a higher maximum ammo capacity to less damage taken during slides. Leveling up is brief, which is a shame, with such a low-level cap, the max can be hit in the first hours of gameplay.

The fun simply comes from seeing how messy and creative you can get with the evisceration of enemies. Grenades and flashbangs make for perfect ways to breach entry. Go in guns blazing with your favorite shotgun or rifle in hand or run in like a madman cracking cranium with your baton, the choice is yours. That’s the fun in RICO, there’s nothing flashy about it, but feeling like an action flick cop with the way you tackle it, is very rewarding. Granted, as fun as it is, its budget does show.

Running into several issues, including game assets clipping, horrible rag dolling of corpses while hilarious, is distracting and objectives simply disappearing. On multiple occasions, the evidence I needed to collect was nowhere to be found on the map. Quitting the mission results in a fail and with no attempts for a retry of an operation, it can be downright frustrating to get so far only to fail with something out of your control. Furthermore, the limited amount of variety in the objectives to be completed, makes for a repetitive experience within cases very much felt. The limited time mechanic also felt out of place and unnecessarily rushing the player for no real reason. RICO does a lot of things right but suffers from several bugs and shortage of content. Granted, it does it right, it a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and makes the most of what is a budget title.

Visually Its…

That whole mentioning of it being a budget title wasn’t all for nothing, for this is where it really shows, and it really hurts. There’s nothing impressive about any of its inner workings. Controls are simple, and that’s not a problem, but fiddling with them will almost be required aiming feels so stiff its almost impossible to enjoy. There’s nothing new done here, just your run of the mill set up for an FPS, as it should be.

RICO is not a pretty game, and there’s no hiding that. It isn’t necessarily a problem with that but it’s not pleasing in any way. It’s characters, assets and layouts are barebones basic and if it weren’t for its redeeming gameplay, would hurt the game a lot more. Same goes for the audio, the player character isn’t voiced, enemies have a few lines to spare and the rest is simply gun noises, the noise of explosions and ticking bombs. Oh and doors, lots of breaking doors. That’s all there is to it, nothing great, nothing good really, but hey, there’s something.

Final Verdict

RICO’s success ultimately depends on how well a job Ground Shatter does at supporting it post launch. For now there’s a lot of fun to be had and plenty of objectives to complete. However, it’s not hard to see that there isn’t an incredible amount of content. With how quick it is to reach the level cap and with no true story to complete, it’s all up to the player’s enjoyment with the title to determine just how often they’ll keep coming back. With a couple of maps, weapons and cosmetics sprinkled in post launch, it would serve as a nice incentive, but as it is, kicking doors and shooting men can only be fun for so long until it’s not.

RICO Is a pleasant surprise for sure. With minimal hype and little buzz surrounding it, it honestly deserves more for what it is. A fun budget title that provides the player with some mindless fun and a rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ good time to be had by yourself or with your best buddy. It suffers badly from its budget status and its kinks, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had if approached without high expectations but rather, with a simple desire to shoot stuff mindlessly.RICOis a title that doesn’t take itself seriously and rightly, doesn’t need to. If bringing the ruckus and creating mayhem without a Triple A experience sounds like a fun time to you, then RICO is the ticket.