When it comes to Run'n Gun video games, one of the most popular old-school games is Contra or Metal Slug, games that today are a classic among classics in video games, but also in more current games of this genre we have the famous and visually spectacular Cuphead. These games were and are also part of many people's childhood and are titles that will remain in many people's memories over the years. The Run'n Gun that I'm going to talk about next is a quite forgotten and unpopular game, but it's still a very good title.
Once again we are faced with a game whose premise is quite simple but fair and necessary for us to understand the starting point of everything we will do throughout our adventure. Rapid Reload introduces us to Axel Sonics and Ruka Hetfield, two adventurers and treasure hunters, who travel around the world in search of the most valuable and coveted items.
One day our two protagonists are informed that one of the most powerful and desired objects "The Magic Stone Valkiry" is found in a certain place in the world. The two treasure hunters are moved by this news and they travel to this place to obtain this valuable object. However, a terrorist organization also finds out about the whereabouts of this magic stone, but as expected this organization wants to obtain this stone to use its great power to dominate the world (the typical) so, during this adventure Axel and Ruka will have to fight against this organization and prevent them from obtaining this powerful magic stone.
The graphics of Rapid Reload are quite good, it's quite a striking game, with very striking colours. Although compared to Metal Slug, a game which is a visual marvel, Rapid Reload is inferior in this aspect, however it is still a title that graphically looks very good to this day, of those few PlayStation 1 games that have aged very well and maybe that is because unlike the fashion that was back then, where most games were in 3D, Rapid Reload was kept and designed with a classic 2D design.
The character design is the best graphic aspect of this game, because its sprites despite being designed in 2D have a very good design, having characteristics of "chibi" characters, that is, characters whose head is bigger proportionally to their body, but in this case, it is not a "chibi" design as exaggerated as other games, because although the head of the characters is bigger than their body, its design does not resemble the classic "chibi" design, in this aspect it is more modest.
The artistic style of the characters maintains characteristics of 90s anime characters and that can be seen in the designs we see inside the game or also in the game's artwork. The design of the enemies as well as the final bosses also present quite original and very good designs, having a quite modest variety of enemies, but thanks to their excellent designs it's really not that annoying when we see that the enemies are repeated a lot on screen. The final bosses are the ones that have a better design, because besides being logically bigger than the common enemies, these ones occupy a bigger quantity on the screen, their level in details and design is much better than others. Besides, the effects like explosions, shots or laser beams are very well done, being this perhaps one of the biggest visual attractions of this title.
The scenarios are also quite varied and these also present very good designs in spite of being the typical scenarios that we will find in this type of games, but they are still very good and with a quality in the details quite careful.
There's not much to say about the Rapid Reload soundtrack, as it has, as expected, the typical melodies that are so characteristic of an action game, but they are not bad and serve their purpose. The Rapid Reload soundtrack is mostly composed of music that encourages us to continue moving forward and eliminating as many enemies as we can, encouraging music of action, violence and destruction. The sound effects such as gunshots, explosions and any other typical effect of a Run'n Gun video game, are of excellent quality in addition to having a great repertoire of sound effects.
Rapid Reload is a Run'n Gun and it's basically a "me against the neighborhood" but with fire guns, the similarity between these two genres of video games is a lot, since the main goal is to defeat all the enemies that are on stage in order to advance to the next one, but what differentiates them from each other is the way we defeat our enemies.
In a Run'n Gun we must advance through stages infested by all kinds of enemies who want to eliminate us, so we must use all the skills that our character has at his disposal and by skills I mean weaponry. Since the strong point of this type of game is the variety of firearms we can use to eliminate anyone who comes to attack us.
Rapid Reload is an extremely fun title, with a lot of scenery to go through, good designs and a decent amount of enemies to defeat. We have 2 characters, as I mentioned before and they have different characteristics, because one of them has a much more destructive weaponry and the other one has a higher movement speed and their weapons reach a higher attack range, that is, their shots reach a longer distance, so according to the characteristics of Axel Sonics and Ruka Hetfield, we can choose the one that suits us best, although it's not such a high difference and the truth is that with both characters you can play perfectly and that's thanks to the fact that their control is quite easy and dynamic.
We will shoot down our enemies during several stages and then we will face the typical final bosses of each stage, these bosses logically present a greater challenge since they have a quite high difficulty level, but even so Rapid Reload is not such a difficult game. One negative point about this game and one that is quite illogical, is that it doesn't have a cooperative mode, and in a game of this style it is quite rare that they haven't implemented this mode.
Rapid Reload is one of those games that despite not being spectacular, is a very good product and perhaps at the time of its launch it was not the right one and that is why not many people know it and it has been quite forgotten. However, it is one of those games that are highly recommended to spend a few hours of fun.
