Rustler (PS5)
The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about its modern urban settings, but Rustler asks a simple question. What if you take running from the cops, committing crimes, and vehicular homicide and transplant it into a new setting? Rustler isn’t shy about essentially just being Grand Theft Auto in medieval times, taking its top-down view for the action straight from Grand Theft Auto 2. With a similar attitude and sense of humor, it does look like Rustler would provide exactly what it promised, but being a deliberate imitator isn’t always going to give you the same successes.
Rustler has you play as a bald hooligan named Guy, the angry young man content to earn coin by working under the local crime boss Herb until his buddy Buddy starts cooking up a grander scheme. If Guy can slip into the royal tournament somehow, he can win his way to marrying the princess, meaning he’d be set for life. Passing off a punk like Guy as a knight will take a lot of work though and it doesn’t exactly put him in good graces with his former boss, Rustler ending up an adventure about exploiting the criminal underbelly of a small medieval society to make your way to the top. Sure, you’ll shake down some people for money, kill some people as favors, and other criminal actions that aren’t too much of a departure from Grand Theft Auto’s missions, but you’ll also find yourself helping with a witch burning, silencing people who believe the Earth is round, and even going on a quest for the Holy Grail (which in this case, is just some really good alcohol).
Guy is an almost entirely unsympathetic character, not exactly cruel but quick to anger and not questioning what people demand of him unless it inconveniences him too much. He’s more muscle than mind, often exasperated with the unusual characters he meets along the way. The game actually opens with a fairly long live action scene setting up the general idea of the world, Guy going around and causing trouble as the knights of the crown try to stop him should he not be too subtle about it. They’re essentially cops in this world, right down to having their horses wear flashing lights on their head, and the game definitely has a good bit of fun transplanting modern ideas into this historical setting. When riding your own horse, if you want to hear music, you have to pick a bard up, and some bards actually beatbox their music instead of play it. If you’re on a horse-drawn cart, backing up will make it beep like a reversing truck. Graffiti adorns the walls of the city, looking almost like spray paint tags you’d find in a modern neighborhood. At the same time, the game isn’t going to let you forget the grimier parts of medieval life, like one of your weapons being horse dung you can often find easily on the street.
Rustler can lay it on a little thick with the referential humor at times, especially with how often it includes almost unaltered references to Monty Python skits and movies. Admittedly, the inclusion of such elements does lead to some of the more interesting objectives as it pushes the game to try and think up new goals besides beating up people and delivering things, but Rustler’s humor can often work best when it’s just being silly in its own way. The cynical jabs at both modern and medieval life do help the game establish its tone, but it is often the unexpected dialogue and characters behaving oddly that make for its highlight moments.
Rustler has you exploring a fairly big and mostly open medieval kingdom, there being a sparsely populated countryside as well as two major settlements. If you want to get places quickly, you can steal a horse with ease, although if the knights notice, you might need to go to Pimp My Horse, where they’ll quickly dye its fur to help you shake the chase. Horses really are glorified cars here, right down to the game having optional missions where you can earn money by working as a taxi or delivering letters. Controlling your horse is fairly easy, point the control stick in the direction you wish to go and you’ll start heading that way, sometimes needing to account for the animal’s turn radius but otherwise all you really need to concern yourself with is if you’ll have the horse sprint or conserve its stamina. Most races aren’t going to be too difficult because of how clean and responsive the riding is, although if you don’t watch carefully you can get caught on something in the road and pulling away from a tight spot can leave you quite vulnerable and lose you a lot of ground in a race.
On foot, things are perhaps a bit too simple. You can get a range of weapons for Guy to knock people around with. A stick is always handy to have, its damage low but it can be used to batter people you don’t wish to kill, get cows moving, and as appropriate for this game’s often juvenile sense of humor, you can set it aflame with a fart and cause some real chaos. Swords, spears, axes, and a shield make up most of what you’ll find for use in battle, the crossbow also an important addition but rather limited. Its reload time is initially quite long, the player wanting to invest the skill points they get for completing both normal and side missions into speeding it up or they’ll not be able to use it in battle beyond a single shot. Enemies can block the bolt too, but on horseback it’s at least easier to load and hit other riders with. Generally though, combat isn’t very deep or exciting, often fairly practical. You can guard an enemy attack to leave them vulnerable and then slash, but if you slash their shields you’ll be left open instead. Sometimes you can just frantically jab foes into submission, but most fights are simple violence rather than something deeper, and even in areas like the fight club you’ll likely just run around a lot and hope maybe to bait out an attack or lock the opponent into not being able to stand back up in time before your next charged up punch floors them again.
The regular fighting isn’t leaned on too heavily at least, and often when you are getting violent, there might be some extra consideration at play. One mission has you trying to chase down and bully people into going to Sunday mass for example, and even when a normal battle is a crucial part of a mission, sometimes it’s over quickly enough the shallow fighting doesn’t really bother you much. Missions are often a chance to see some new strange idea at play like dressing up as Death to scare some superstitious peasants or trying to help a rich guy start a rap career, the absurdity beating out the basic gameplay tied to the unusual situations. Jousting proves to be an interesting late addition, but often Rustler ends up a game where you mostly bounce from one mission to the next, not facing too much trouble as you wait to see what humorous situation it’s concocted by mixing medieval trappings with modern street crime.
THE VERDICT: Rustler may proclaim loud and proud that it’s evoking Grand Theft Auto, but it’s often its own touches that end up working the most in its favor. Copying the gameplay of Rockstar’s mega hit didn’t pan out the best, the on-foot fighting basic and not that enjoyable, but horse riding is responsive and easy to usually make up for it. However, it’s often the context of what you’re up to that makes it more interesting than the actual activities. The anachronistic blend of medieval fantasy with urban grit leads to some delightful absurdity, and with most of the missions being quick little jobs, it’s pretty easy to get into a rhythm of clearing tasks rapidly to get to see the funnier and more imaginative moments.
And so, I give Rustler for PlayStation 5…
An OKAY rating. Rustler really isn’t that clever nor does it even adapt its borrowed gameplay formula very smoothly. A lot of the time, Rustler is at its best when you’re almost an actor helping realize a scene. It’s not hard to punch people to force them to mass, or get an entire prison camp high on herbs, or even escape knights during a crime spree because they don’t seem to know what to do when they’re right up against your horse. However, engaging with the situations at least gives you strange and funny situations, and while it can lean a bit strongly on Monty Python characters carried over straight from their source material, there’s also some novelty to actually encountering them in a video game world. Rustler is abrasive with its comedy and cynical look at society, but it’s not that abrasive with its gameplay, the player often able to do jobs with ease and get to see if they’ve found one of the ones with some good comedy to back it up or just move along quickly if it’s some generic crime. Rustler has a lot of side activities like the mail and taxi missions, but the main story and even all the side quests don’t take that long to go through so it doesn’t wear out its welcome, usually having a strong enough theming to hold your interest. It definitely needs to polish up its action if it wants to be actually engaging, but because it doesn’t require much smarts or skill to succeed save for perhaps buying very useful upgrades like picking up items while on horseback early, you can stick around and see where the ride goes without too much resistance.
Rustler is kind of one long joke and that’s how it’s best enjoyed. The best moments are noticing the small touches to realize the premise of its setting, and being able to engage a bit with its anachronistic antics is more entertaining than the substance of your actions. You’re getting into fights and stealing horses because of the associated jokes more than the gameplay value, and while it’s not always providing the best comedic moments, it still has enough ideas that the repetitive action is smoothed over by funny dialogue and strange situations. It’s not quite the “Medieval GTA” game because it doesn’t hit certain quality benchmarks, but it at least explores that elevator pitch of a description with enough breadth to satisfy your curiosity.