Megaton Rainfall is a superhero simulator where you play as an interdimensional superhero whose Father is a flying box. The player is tasked with protecting the cities of Earth from very repetitive waves of enemies. The game is an awe-inspiring visual and technical achievement where unfortunately the most boring thing you will do while playing is what the game tasks you with.
VR is advised
It’s clear very early into Megaton Rainfall that this is a game developed with VR in mind. This reviewer unfortunately has not made the leap in VR so had to play through the game on a standard television. While the experience wasn’t enormously marred, there was a constant niggling thought that what’s happening on screen would be a lot more thrilling if experienced wearing a headset.
Your Dad is a box
The story of Megaton Rainfall was alluded to briefly in the introduction but there really isn’t much more to say. The player awakes as an ethereal purple being with the power of flight and immediately encounters a talking box which informs the player that they are tasked with protecting the people of earth. What Megaton Rainfall does very well here is a wonderful sense of speed and acceleration. The player can quickly fly beyond the atmosphere of the earth and into the solar system, and eventually beyond the galaxy into the one of the spiral galaxies visible in the night sky. Chasing the attacking alien ships around a city, weaving in and out of skyscrapers is also very rewarding.
Megaton Rainfall keeps dragging you back to earth and its bland Cardboard cities and frequently frustrating fights against boring enemies
But I don’t want to save the city
The missions that the player is actually tasked with are where Megaton Rainfall becomes much less fun. The player must hit small moving targets while avoiding hitting buildings. If the player hits too many buildings the casualty count will get too high and the mission will restart. The powers that the player will accumulate during the game are usually overpowered and their use can result in too many casualties which will then end the mission. Destroying cities is something that has been a lot of fun in previous games, and sometimes the urge to level city blocks will trump the player’s mission and then, for a brief time, Megaton Rainfall is a lot of fun.
sound design in Megaton Rainfall is quite flat, the aliens sound mechanical; the scream of civilians which all sound the same and once the player finds themselves in space there is silence, which is quite effective
There’s a whole universe out there
This is a game that is occasionally quite impressive graphically, while the cities all look copy pasted the visuals as the player speeds around the universe can be breath-taking, the sun appearing around the edge of Mars, blasting through the rings of Saturn, and journeying amongst the stars of a distant galaxy is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, Megaton Rainfall keeps dragging you back to earth and its bland Cardboard cities and frequently frustrating fights against boring enemies.
Some charmingly dreadful songs
The sound design in Megaton Rainfall is quite flat, the aliens sound mechanical; the scream of civilians which all sound the same and once the player finds themselves in space there is silence, which is quite effective. What does stand out in Megaton Rainfall’s sound design are the songs that sound like they were written for the game. They are hilariously cheesy sounding and while I wouldn’t listen to them for pleasure, they did have me laughing at their abject dreadfulness.
To reiterate, get this with a headset
This was a game made for the VR and on a standard TV the action does feel fairly flat, and uninteresting. I can imagine the speed and scale in Megaton Rainfall being quite exhilarating with a VR headset because the missions and action here lets the game down. That really is the take away here, don’t buy Megaton Rainfall without a headset, the charm of the universe is brief.
