Ra Ra Boom Review

Ra Ra Boom tells the story of Aris, Saida, Ren, and Vee, four high school students, who will need to save planet Earth from robots going haywire after an A.I. has gone rogue and sent out armies of walking metal tins to wreck the planet and take over. Are our four heroines up to the task to stop the A.I. mind?

Ra Ra Boom is a 2D side scrolling beat’em up where players will play as one of four characters. Each has three different attacks: weak, strong and long range. As players kill enemies, a special attack meter will build up over time allowing players to unleash a devastating attack on nearby enemies.

Dead enemies will drop nuts and bolts that can be picked up and used at the shop, which is accessible between levels or when starting the game. You’ll be able to upgrade the characters’ health, melee attack power, long range rate of fire; just to name a few.

Along with upgrading all four characters’ characteristics, you can also purchase a handful of new skills for each “bracket” (stunts, melee, range) such as double jump, dodging, pistol whipping, uppercut, poison ammo and ice ammo; just to enumerate a few ones.

When playing solo, each character acts as a life. Once the first character dies, you’ll be able to select another one and so on. Once all four are dead, it’s game over. Amidst the junk you’ll find after disposing of enemies will also be batteries; they allow characters to regain a bit of health and trust me you’ll need it. Thankfully, each level has quite a few checkpoints.

The game looks great; highly colorful with each level having a different theme. The cutscenes look great; telling the story also like a cross between a Saturday morning cartoon show and a comic book. While the drawings look great, there’s something odd and familiar about it. On the audio side of things, it’s fine, although the intro theme sounds like a rejected tune from River City Girls sang by clone of Megan McDufee. Voiceover work is fine, but nothing special.

When it come to flaws, this game has them as well. The first one being that the game crashes/crashed randomly; whether it be after finishing a level or reaching a checkpoint. Also crashed when trying to skip cutscenes. And the other nuisance is also the fact that this game is incredibly cheap; also the combat and dodging is half a second delayed which can make a whole difference. Some enemies do unreasonable damage; worse than any boss, which is completely illogical.

Ra Ra Boom is a by number beat’em up. Go from point A to B, beat up everything in your path, beat the boss, rinse, repeat. The upgrades are pretty fun and allows some (or little) combat depth. However, the game is riddled with cheap enemies, regular enemies that hit harder than bosses; and I’ve also had a few issues of game crashing during the first hour. If you love the genre, this is a no brainer. If you’re looking to jump in the genre, there are better options out there such as Fight N’ Rage.