Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken (PS3)

When I played through Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, it felt like I had entered the world of an animated music video. Whenever the major cutscenes played that gave the broader details of the world or explained the character’s backstory, the music selection seemed so in sync with the visuals on screen that it felt like they had to be made to complement one another. Lyrical artistry is preserved by not describing the on-screen visuals literally and yet they line up well with the world of anthropomorphized birds, and when the song gives way to its instrumental rhythm instead, the animation makes sure to keep in step. New World Revolution’s “Illuminate Me” is certainly the stand out for conveying so much important information while the cutscene gives the song room to breathe, but even when it can’t all be packed in to the length of a song the music definitely feels like a crucial part of the experience.

That’s what made it all the more impressive to learn that Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken was not created as a complement to the music but added because it felt like it fit with what was already being made. This PlayStation 3 title is the enhanced version of a browser game called Rocketbirds: Revolution!, and during development of its follow up the creator of Rocketbirds Sian Yue Tan approached New World Revolution to create the game’s soundtrack. There was definitely coordination between the two halves of this collaboration to make it work within the game’s context, but the impressive part is that wasn’t the impetus for the game’s creation and yet it came out so well. There are some action moments that try to throw in music tracks from New World Revolution that unfortunately drown it out with the gunfights or don’t cue well for keeping up with the flow of the action, but those scenes that establish the game’s world are definitely the most entertaining part of playing this 2D action game.

The world of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is one run by an empire of cruel anthropomorphic penguins who have managed to subjugate most of the other avian races of the world through brute force and technological advantages. Evoking Soviet Russia but taking it to the extreme while also turning the soldiers into feathered creatures, this empire is lead by a bird named Putzki that becomes the target of one particularly rebellious chicken. Hardboiled Chicken, sometimes just called Hardboiled for short, aims to be a one man revolution as he fights his way into penguin military bases searching for the man in charge, but his efforts are repeatedly foiled in part by Putzki’s right hand bird Agent Brno. Hardboiled ends up needing to join up with other bird species to get a real revolution going to put down the penguin threat that Hardboiled has a particularly dark history with.

Somewhat unfortunately, when the game isn’t whipping out its soundtrack for the cutscenes and lets the voice actors do the work, the game feels far less artistically driven. Hardboiled’s quips are rather flat, Brno’s a rather generic action movie villain, and when characters speak during the action they tend to grind thing to a halt so they can slowly display text bubbles while making bothersome squawking noises as you wait for things to progress. Generally though most of the game spends its time with gunfights and minor puzzles so the weaker approaches to exposition don’t really make you yearn too hard for something better put together, the game instead feeling more like you’re playing the scenes between big steps in a music video that would usually be brushed over for the sake of a more concise montage.

A lot of Hardboiled’s action is based around the gunfights when it probably shouldn’t have been. While you get a few different weapons as you push further in the game like pistols, machine guns, grenades, and shotguns, the sidescrolling set-up means the gun fights are often just about pointing your body in the proper direction and firing at the bird in your path. You can duck and roll around, hide behind cover, or sometimes even duck into an alcove to the side where you’ll be completely safe until you pop back out, but most exchanges involve you firing rapidly at the bird before they can act. Bullets can take a surprising amount of time to kill a target, meaning you’ll be filling them with quite a bit of lead before they’ll finally truly bite the bullet. It can be amusing at first to watch your gunshots make an enemy bounce about in the air, but the body juggling happens so often since enemy troops are so durable that it becomes rote. A little animation plays to let you know when the enemy is finally dead, but it takes a few seconds so you might just disengage early believing that surely should have been enough to finish the job.

When enemies come in groups, you can often fire into a crowd and the juggling of the bodies will mean you can eventually have them all bouncing about. The times when you are really unsafe end up being moments where there are birds on both sides, the player not as easily able to manage a group when they have to look right and left repeatedly. Later in the game shielded enemies are added who you have to maneuver around to shoot their backs and some foes have stronger weapons so you’d want to prioritize a soldier with a rocket launcher first to ensure your safety. Sadly, new foes don’t really remove the repetition of a lot of the firefights nor does it really ever ask you to get too creative with how you handle regular encounters. The game doesn’t even want to give you boss encounters it seems, because the only true one is an underwhelming showdown with Brno where it’s mostly running about, taking potshots, and pressing the buttons in the background that spawn in ammo and health. Otherwise, previous encounters with Brno and Putzki involve them just calling in waves of troops to fight for them, these battles a bit hard because of their survival gauntlet nature but not much more exciting for it.

Regular level navigation is often spiced up by the inclusion of puzzles though. Not every one is a winner, one involving pushing a bunch of boxes around between elevators definitely drags, but taking a moment to figure out how to get around an auto-turret safely or making sure enemy troops don’t spot you when you’re at a huge disadvantage at least breaks up the monotony of regular combat. A lot of it involves platforming to the right spots or setting things up so you can grab the right keycards needed for progress, but there is one mechanic that has a bit more thought put into it. Little devices known as Brain Bugs can be used to hijack an enemy penguin’s mind and make them do your bidding. Oftentimes the purpose of this is to just have that penguin walk into an area you can’t reach to press a switch, maybe kill a guard or two, and then off themselves so you have a clear path forward. In regular gunfights things are too hectic to whip these out and toss them around, but you can do some area scouting with one if they’re in the right position where you can mind control them subtly. Most of the time though it will only really have an impact if it’s the intended way to move through a certain area, and figuring out what to do as a mind controlled penguin is so easy that making the Brain Bug hit is likely the harder part of these portions. That’s only because the Brain Bug activates on a delay and has a small explosion radius a penguin needs to be very close to, but you can rapidly toss them until they work so it’s not like setting up the brain takeover is a trial in itself.

The parts where Hardboiled straps on a jetpack and actually becomes a Rocketbird probably do the best job at providing fights with a bit more depth that can still be exciting and simple. Flying around the air and aiming your gun control well and there’s a good sense of momentum when you put more power into your pack or abruptly cut the gas. Enemies will often pop out of the same part of a large zeppelin during these portions so you can sort of cheekily shoot them as they come out of the single exit, but they start coming in strong enough numbers that you’ll have plenty of airborne troops you’ll need to fight in different ways. Maneuverable ones will try to fly around to your back and pester you while rocket launcher wielding ones fire homing rockets, and after wiping out these soldiers you hop aboard the zeppelin and figure out the route needed to rig the thing to explode while escaping with your life. These aren’t a common part of the adventure and aren’t too meaty when they crop up, but they do definitely make the combat have more interesting considerations like how you maneuver and what risks to take to wipe out the enemy forces.

If you choose to play the cooperative campaign though, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken instead follows the path a group of freedom-fighting budgies take to save a general’s daughter. Essentially an adjusted version of the game’s main plot, you’ll move through familiar areas but with characters half the height. The budgies each have a unique weapon, can ride on each other’s shoulders, and need to solve puzzles that require two players working together, but it’s not able to escape the tedium of gunfights and the advantages of having two players means you can better cover your rear and thus undermine the challenge level of a campaign that can’t bring too much to its frequent battles.

THE VERDICT: At times, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken can make you feel like you’re stepping into the world only hinted at in an animated music video, but it unfortunately shows why some worlds are better explored in broad strokes. When you’re viewing a cutscene synced up with New World Revolution’s music it can be an exceptional blend of visuals and sound, but then you need to actually control Hardboiled as he explores the world created in those scenes and it’s one filled with repetitive and slow gunfights that don’t innovate enough for how much time they fill. Flying around with the rocket pack and solving certain puzzles can be a bit more interesting even if the Brain Bugs feel like their mind control powers are used for basic tasks. Sadly, Hardboiled spends more time meeting uninspired enemy resistance that he needs to hold at bay by juggling their bodies with gunfire for way too long, so the music video feel instead gives way to an experience more about bland and repetitive gun combat.

And so, I give Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken for PlayStation 3…

A BAD rating. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken’s approach to two-dimensional gunfights is just far too flawed to let the player bask in the lovely marriage between animation and music seen at its highest points. The jetpack flight sections manage to handle themselves well, although their limited design would have needed more iteration if they were a more present part of the experience. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken shows that it doesn’t have too much imagination when it comes to its mechanical side though, the different guns doing little to spice up the firefights and the puzzles not substantial enough to truly distract from how often things will boil down to standing in place and shooting a foe repeatedly until they finally croak. The gun combat is an appropriate fit for the world created in the scenes though so it feels an essential part of the experience, but the end product ends up feeling like the artistry was put into the stand out scenes. Everything else, even the scenes that aren’t focused on their backing tracks, doesn’t seem like they had the same degree of inspiration behind it, gameplay ruts common and the inherent battle system losing its appeal shortly after you realize how long each gunfight will take.

The music video feel of the scene set to Illuminate Me does so much more for the world of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken and its lead than almost any moment of gameplay. The hero’s extreme world, the threat of the penguin empire, the stakes of his mission, it all comes together wonderfully in less than five minutes, but this game isn’t a five minute experience. While it can achieve a few other moments of musical synchronicity that impress and some action segments aren’t too bad, the repetitive and flawed gunplay drains the good will built off those moments. While the whole game didn’t need to match the impressive heights of New World Revolution’s songs put to animation, it did at least need to do something good in between to make this a game worthy of hosting them.