Column: 'Critical Reception: Pipeworks' Rampage: Total Destruction'

This week, Critical Reception targets the Pipeworks Software developed, Midway published Rampage: Total Destruction for the PS2 and GameCube, as the franchise seeks to return to relevance - or at least prominence - with its latest incarnation. Taking a look as video game reviewers sound off, the attempt fails miserably, scoring a pithy 55% average ranking according to GameRankings.com. This score fares only slightly better than that of the previous iteration, Rampage 2: Universal Tour, which appeared in the N64, PS1, and the Game Boy and averaged a 50% across those platforms. Citing a retro add-on that explains the new game's shortcomings all too well GameSpot's Alex Navarro notes: "Perhaps the saddest thing about Total Destruction is its inclusion of the original Rampage and Rampage: World Tour arcade games as bonus extras. It's not sad because they're bad emulations of the original games; in fact, they're pretty spot on. The problem is that being able to directly compare these ancient games to the new one, and seeing so little forward progress between the two, is just crushing. Not to mention that these old games simply don't hold up that well in this day and age." You can read the full Gamasutra column on the subject for more, including insight from consumer game review sites 1UP and IGN (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).