Raid 2020

"Winners don't do drugs...or this game..."

Note: The REAL rating for this game is “-2”, but the rating system would not permit that score, so I’m just letting you know here...

I should have seen this coming, because all of the I’d seen about this game anywhere I looked warned that it completely sucked, and was not to be played. I took this to be a challenge, because a lot of games that everyone else trashes I wind up liking something about, so I took it upon myself to give this one a try and see if there was anything good to be found in it. I can now safely say that I have plumbed the lowest realms of putrid gaming, and witnessed the worst that the NES could ever hope to offer. There is nothing good about this game; ratings just don’t go low enough to describe my feelings for this game. Here’s the deal:

Story 1/10

Allegedly, you are some kind of cop in this game, and your mission is to stop drug dealers from dealing dope with the only method this game was smart enough to come up with...sending the bastards straight to hell with hot lead. In real life, this is usually a last resort, but in this game, it’s the only resort, as you set out on your quest to clean up the city and bring peace and happiness back...ah, the heck with it. This story sucks. There’s nothing about drugs in this game except for in the title screen, and they probably just added that to try to justify the senseless violence in the rest of the game. It doesn’t help. Either way, it’s pointless shooting in a pointless game.

Gameplay -2/10

No, you’re not seeing things. That is a “minus 2” rating I gave this game in this category. This game is obnoxious in every aspect. I promise you you will be having flashbacks of Atari and Colecovision games the moment you start playing this sucker. You walk around from left to right, shooting slow moving bullets at a bunch of lame looking enemies, with the occasional jetpack and power up to make things more confusing. Control is terrible, and when you press up to move up, you move up and backward at the same time, kind of like that ship in Zaxxon, only the playing field isn’t set at a different angle like Zaxxon’s is, so it’s just obnoxious here. It must have been trickier to add this twist to the controls, and yet the results massively suck, leading me to wonder what they were thinking in setting it up this way. Really, I don’t give a rip. Anyway, so your guy wanders around shooting scummy looking (I think) drug dealers while dodging monster flies, bird crap, and deadly black birds that just sit there and injure you if you touch them. You can jump on top of enemies in this game and stay there to avoid being attacked, which must be a glitch, because it doesn’t harm either you or them. It reminds me of those Tom and Jerry cartoons where Jerry is sitting right on top of Tom’s head smiling while Tom tries to figure out where he went. Funny in the cartoon...lame-ass in a game about killing drug dealers. Remember I mentioned a jetpack earlier? Well, you’ll hardly notice when you get it. It still looks just like you’re walking, except you have no shadow. I think it’s to help you dodge the mines, which the drug dealers have set all over the place in plain sight, but it didn’t help me. I still got killed. Don’t cry for me, though...I rejoiced at my early demise. I felt liberated by the message “Game Over”, and honestly felt like I could have hugged “Ikari Warriors 2” or “Godzilla 2” or any of my previous least favorite games at that moment. This game is a Grand Central station bathroom floor during rush hour after a projectile puking contest by the local wino’s guild on a hot summer day during a month long janitor’s strike. Did that make sense? No? Well neither does this crappy game! This game is programming diarrhea, and an insult to all other games ever produced.


Graphics -2/10

Crap. Total crap. COMPLETE and total crap. If I say these are bad, I’ll win the understatement of the decade award. This graphics are ridiculous, and could have been cranked out by a first semester college programming schmuck who skipped half his classes and lacked any concept of the finer points of the art of game making. I’ll bet whoever put together the “visuals” in this game had to join the witness relocation program to avoid angry mobs of people who paid money to play this game. They are the stench of the earth, and well suited to the horrible gameplay.

Sound -2/10

In the name of all that is good and decent, what IS this NOISE? This is the WORST music possible for a game based on the war on drugs. Hell, it wouldn’t have passed as music in “Smurf” for the Colecovision! It’s hokey and stupid and grating on the ears! It’s not only bad, it’s SO bad, it makes me want to take my finger, poke it through my eye, and scramble my brain around just to end the misery. The sound effects do not even merit a mention. They sound about as good as that garbage internal PC speaker noise your computer makes when you play those ancient PC games that predate computer speakers and even that’s a stretch. You’ll be rolling on the floor, foaming at the mouth after five minutes of this auditory vomit. How many ways can I say it? THIS SOUND SUCKS!

*Sigh* What more can I say? In summary, this game is pig sh**. The only thing I can think is this game was designed to be intentionally horrific to promote it’s anti-drug case. Anyone who has ever played this game, upon hearing any reference to drugs, will be reminded of this game, and become instantly nauseous thinking of the horrific torture this game subjected them to. I occasionally like to experiment with a game when I hear about how bad it is, because it’s fun to see just how crappy a game can be some times. Well, even if you’re into that, you WON’T laugh at this game. It’s so crappy, the “Man, this game sucks!” laugh factor is nonexistent. Dismiss any thoughts of playing this game ever and go back to watching Ron Popeil sliceo-diceo-crappo infomercials...you’ll have a lot more fun with those.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/03, Updated 06/13/03