Geekscape Games Geek Peek Review: ‘Retro/Grade’

Retro/Grade ends up winning the award for “I didn’t know that was possible.” It actually had me thinking back to an old episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where Will Smith had the idea for a book called ‘Celebrity Houses…At Night!” Both ideas are insane and shouldn’t work at all. Somehow, the folks over at 24 Caret Games managed to mash together a shoot-em-up and a rhythm game and have it actually work better than I expected.

Retro/Grade has you jump in the role of Rick Rocket who has to restore the space-time continuum before the whole universe is destroyed by the temporal anomaly. The only way you can restore the balance is to play in reverse. Essentially, you are undoing everything that was already played out before you take control. The rhythm part of the equation comes into play in that you have to time your button presses to your shots that are collected as you go in reverse. While doing this, you need to avoid the enemies attacks that appear behind as well as in front of you at times.

Using a crazy neon color scheme, it can be hard to keep track of everything, especially the higher you go in the six difficulty levels. I had a hard time in pro mode due to the colors blending in with the things I was suppose to avoid thus losing track of the shots I was suppose to collect. I didn’t have a PS3 guitar controller to test out but with dexterity and speed you need in order to go back and forth on the note lines reminded me how bad my reaction times are lately. The electro-pop music is charming and I was never in full head-bobbing motion while trying to keep my multiplier up, although I could just use my limited meter to reverse time and correct my screw-ups.

The only thing wrong with this elaborate mix-up of game genres is that there is not enough to keep you engaged past the ten campaign levels. There’s a challenge mode but that just rehashes the same levels with a specific objective for you to do. Even the music seems to sound the same after awhile. Taking a chance seemed to payoff for 24 Caret Games in creating Retro/Grade, it just left me wanting more of its goodness.