Welcome to our review of Rico, a game that looked to impress, but did it really?
The ultimate buddy-cop shooter!
Two cops, one case and only 24 hours to take them down… can you score the bust of a lifetime? Take the role of a loose cannon police detective and face off against criminal gangs in an exciting procedurally-generated action movie FPS. Join forces with a friend, online or locally, and take down those crooks in true buddy-cop style!
As a part of the RICO task force, your mission is clear: get in, take down the criminals and get out again. Sounds easy, but it’s not – procedurally-generated cases mean you’ll never know who or what’s waiting for you. Pick your load-out, then use the element of surprise to get a tactical edge over the enemy. Unlock new weapons, mission types, and traits, or dive into Daily Play and see how high you can climb the cop rankings!
Take down criminal gangs with extreme prejudice and solve the RICO case – you’ve only got 24 hours, detective!
Rico is your every day First Person Shooter that uses bullet time, made famous by the Matrix movies. You enter the room, it slows down, you hopefully hit the bad guys in the head or take em out regardless of where you hit and all while staying alive and following your objectives.
Sounds easy and in theory, it really is! What makes it hard is that the enemies can send in reinforcements, you can run out of bullets and so much more. In theory, this is a fun and very energetic game! In theory!
What goes wrong is when you actually start playing this game…
I felt Rico was a little bug infested, often with either item just shaking. At one point I had a TV shaking on its stand and just hovering in a way above an item I needed to get. It made me fire off a few shots to take down the TV so I could empty out the item case.
At other times, I had to fire three or more shots into the heads of my enemies, even in easy mode, before they went down. Sure I got the achievements out of it, but I could just think of so many tweaks to make the single-player experience so much more enjoying…
Let us start with the tutorial, it did not teach me a single thing… It just kept talking and talking without me actually doing anything. You can slide into a door, but how the heck do I do this? I found out around 10 minutes into an actual game, just so wrong…
Another thing that bugged me like crazy, I was often unable to restart a single game unless I rebooted the entire software. It kept insisting I play online or create an online game, might have been bad luck, but there are just so many bugs a man can take in a single game.
Now do not get me wrong, Rico is not all bad, sliding down a room, hitting your target in the head while escaping from another that comes running at you with a pipe in hand, that was fun, to say the least. In the end, it is all about measuring up the good versus the bad and I have some serious issues with how heavy the bad points can weigh.
In a rather intense conclusion this time, I decided to give Rico the benefit of the doubt. When it played properly, it did deliver a good experience, but the real light shines in co-op. As a single player game, I would not consider this game a must own.
