Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is totally outrageous, and its facetious plot and humorous characters act as its strongest points. A side-scrolling action-platformer from Ratloop Asia, Rocketbirds has clever character design, a clean aesthetic and a pretty awesome soundtrack from the band New World Revolution. Unfortunately, its gameplay doesn't lift the overall game up to the heights set by its amazing presentation, and the entire package is brought down to a lower -- albeit good -- standard as a result.
The gun-toting Rocketbird was subjected to an experiment by the evil Putzki, and as a result has amazing speed and strength. He can use all manner of weapons, from small arms to heavy machine guns to grenades. He can also tuck-and-roll away from his enemies, move around objects in the environment, and jump up to and grab various ledges. In short: Rocketbird is an action hero. And a chicken.
Rocketbirds controls fairly well, and the fact that you can change the control scheme to support both the directional pad and the left analog stick to move your character is awesome. But the feel of the game is undeniably stiff. The controls can be finicky and moving Rocketbird could be a bit of a chore in certain situations. He can't shoot and jump, and he can't aim his gun anywhere but straight ahead. It's true that every side-scroller ever made has its own quirks and unique feel, but stiff-feeling games like old-school Castlevania titles still manage to be excellent. Rocketbirds doesn't quite overcome its sometimes-awkward feel, however. It doesn't control poorly, but it's somewhat disappointing that gameplay isn't among Rocketbirds more top notch aspects.
Thankfully, just about everything else related to Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken contributes towards lifting the overall package back up to an acceptable place, one that may yet convince you to spend your hard-earned money on it. It's extremely funny, and doesn't take itself seriously. Its mixture of real, over-acted voice acting and simple voice-like sound effects contributes greatly to its humorous slant. And the graphical look of Rocketbirds is clean, colorful and pretty much amazing. This is especially true during cutscenes, which are accompanied by an excellent soundtrack.
Rocketbirds is also a friendly and accessible side-scroller. A forgiving checkpoint system and cursory control options immediately help distinguish it from recent games like Moon Diver or BloodRayne: Betrayal, which pride themselves on being old-school side-scrollers with punishingly old-school levels of difficulty. It's not to say that there aren't some tough spots in Rocketbirds, because there certainly are, but they are few and far between. If anything, emphasis is placed more on puzzle-solving than combat in the game's most frustrating areas, and even then, you shouldn't find yourself stuck in place for too long. And if the monotony of 2D side-scrolling platforming and action sequences get to you, you'll also find aerial combat segments that break everything up.
Hardboiled Chicken has multiplayer, though you'll have to play locally. I wasn't at all enthralled with this mode, and spent very little time with it as a result. It provides gamers with a slightly-modified campaign in which different characters can be used with different strengths and weaknesses. I think that Rocketbirds' controls actually get worse here, and it's also disappointing that there's no online multiplayer functionality. Nonetheless, it's a mode you may be interested in if you enjoy couch co-op, though Rocketbirds is easily a more enjoyable experience when kept as a single-player romp as opposed to trying to rope in your friends.