A Budget Platformer That’s Perfect For Swingers
Redtail Relic Rush has the distinction of being the first release from Afil Games that doesn’t clog up the Xbox Store with three different versions. Instead, it arrives with the Xbox-mandated ‘Play Anywhere’ label on the front, and ‘only’ offers 2000G, rather than the 6000G you might receive from playing every released version of it. I’m not sure the makers of Redtail Relic Rush will particularly care about any of this, but hey – we thought it was notable enough to make Gamerscore fiends aware.
Redtail Relic Rush, to its credit, does its best to make sure that it’s remembered for more than this. It may look like your typical budget 2D platforming fare, but it’s got aspirations to be something more. It aims to be a grappling, swinging demake of the Bionic Commando series. Your aim is to get from A to B, but very little of your time is spent on the floor. Instead, you’re up in the air, latching onto grapple-points and swinging like Tarzan through the level.
Redtail Jones And The Temple Of Wooooo
You play as Redtail, who is a red panda explorer with a well-worn copy of the Indiana Jones VHS boxset at home. She has a fedora, an eye for a golden idol treasure, and – most important of all – a whip. The whip is what allows for some swinging: around the level are cross-like grapple-points, and you can tap X to whip onto them. These have you swinging backwards and forwards, but you can also pull up or down on the analogue stick to lengthen or shorten the connection.
I was immediately worried that Redtail Relic Rush wasn’t going to be able to handle the mechanic. I’ve played a fair share of grappling games, and very few feel right. But Redtail Relic Rush completely surprised me: the physics feel natural to the point that you can detach from a grapple-swing and anticipate exactly where you will arc. You can dance between grapple-points with ease, and speed-runners will be pleased to know that it’s exactly as exploitable as it sounds.
I was pleasantly surprised that this core interaction felt so good. Bionic Commando and Miles Morales are both nodding appreciatively at each other. It could very easily have been a big red ‘Nope’ label slapped on the front of the box.
Death To All Bats
If there’s an asterisk to this, it’s that you can’t shorten or lengthen the whip at speeds. There are bats in later levels (arrrrgh, the sodding bats!) which undulate towards you, and you need to tuck yourself in tight to the grappling-point if you want to navigate past them. But you can’t do it at speed: shortening the whip and swinging in a downward arc are both on the same button, so you have to kind of wait for the whip to slow its arc and then you can shorten it. It’s an awkward and clumsy step that has you cursing bats forevermore. Honestly, are bats pains in the arse in every platforming game?
But otherwise, it’s a nippy and satisfying way of traversing the level. And Redtail Relic Rush knows it, filling the levels with bucketloads of grappling opportunities. I’m a fan of how the level designers will give you a couple of different routes through a level – a grapple one and a jumpy one – as if there was ever a choice. Of COURSE I am going to grapple through.
The rest of Redtail Relic Rush is fairly standard platforming fare. There are enemies of a few different varieties, including those ruddy bats, but also some walking turnips, walking frog-things and some spiny guys who you’re best ignoring. The turnips and spiky ones are a little too similar for my liking, which leads to some unwanted deaths, but there’s very little point in engaging with any of them, so just swing on by.
Faintly Familiar, But Still Fun
There are crumbling platforms, spikes, rolling rocks (oddly, not a tricky obstacle against someone with a grappling whip) and springboards. None of these are new or interesting in any way, but there are some satisfying combinations with the whip. Joyride on a crumbling platform until you are level with a grappling point; fire off a springboard and into a sequence of grapples. They at least give Redtail Relic Rush a sense of flow.
A halfway checkpoint saves your bacon if a bat gets you (and, oh, they will), while an idol represents the level’s end. Why Redtail Relic Rush isn’t satisfied with one golden idol, we don’t know. Perhaps red pandas are greedier than we thought. There are thirty levels here and, as we mentioned, 2000G for your troubles.
As tends to happen with most Afil Games platformers, I ended up breezing through Redtail Relic Rush. Outside of the bats, Redtail Relic Rush isn’t particularly challenging, and any kind of mastery over the whip means you can bypass huge swathes of the level. I almost felt guilty swinging high over a sequence of crumbling platforms or spiny tortoises in a row, but it was the swinging that I was enjoying. I wasn’t going to toss that away.
Spider-Panda, Spider-Panda, Does Whatever A Panda Can
I emerged at the end of Redtail Relic Rush with 2000G, barely a sweat, and an urge to jump out the window and grapple to work. That’s testament to the fun grappling system in Redtail Relic Rush, which had no right to be so good for a sub-£5 indie platformer. The game doesn’t find any decent obstacles to throw in my way, but for an hour I could feel like a Poundland Spiderman, and I mean that in a mostly positive way.
Important Links
Redtail Relic Rush Swings Onto Xbox – And Afil Games Is Trying Something A Little Different – https://www.thexboxhub.com/redtail-relic-rush-swings-onto-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/redtail-relic-rush/9MTFCQDWSFGP
