UFO 50 Retrospective Part 28 - Rail Heist
Yeehaw
Lots to talk about with the backstory for this one. Rail Heist is the first game with credits since Tao Nemuru bought the company and became CEO and producer, and since Gerry Smolski left the company in the power struggle. In the credits of this game we see Tao Nemuru as producer, and the manager he brought into the company, Ian Spinzer. We now have middle management in the mix! Ian Spinzer will become someone VERY important to the story, but for now, we just know he’s middle management. Most of that doesn’t matter for this game, though. Rail Heist was already being made before the buyout even happened, so they didn’t have much of an effect on the creation of this game. Which might explain why it fucking kicks ass.
Taking place in the world of Lonestar, this game is the game that takes place, I BELIEVE, as a far flung sequel to the world in Devilition. There’s one other game that’ll take place here, Grimstone, which started production before Rail Heist but won’t come out for another year. So what is Rail Heist about?
In Rail Heist, you play three train robbers, led by Gran, an ol’ bank robber who’s retired by this point, but is still your guide, cause she knows this bidness better than anyone. This is a kind of… turn based action puzzle platformer? Your character is placed on this train, and you need to use the environment to your advantage. Once the lawmen are wary of your presence, they will begin patrolling, and now you only have 8 seconds before it swaps to their turn, where they move around, and if they see you, they’ll just fucking shoot you. If they see you, at ALL, they will fucking shoot you. The lawmen of this world have VERY twitchy fingers. You CAN use this to their advantage, throwing chickens to get them to unload their bullet and take a sec to reload, or have them shoot their fucking buddies. This game is PERFECT in its representation of how awful cops are at their jobs.
You can use the environment to your advantage, hiding in barrels, throwing boxes, punching lawmen off trains, breaking the floor from under them and having them fall to their deaths. Sound isn’t a thing here, only if they have DIRECT eye sight with you will they know you’re there, so if you’re like, just above them, nope. They got laser eyes. But if you have your gun out, you ALSO have overwatch. Use THAT to your advantage!
This game is utter clownshoes, and is one of the most fun things I’ve played in ages. While the levels ARE always the same, things fall out of hand very, VERY quickly, and when you die you fucking bounce all over the god damn place between enemy bullets, or go SPLAT on the rail tracks, it’s so funny. It feels really rewarding and fun to FINALLY conquer a level. You can also get three medals on each level, one for killing all lawmen, one for beating a pre-set time, and one for killing no lawmen. It’s real fun learning each level and developing a route through each.
This is one of my personal favorite games in the collection, 4th place. Highly recommended.
10/10