When you’ve reviewed over 4,500 games, it truly takes effort to end up somewhere near the bottom of that pile in terms of the quality of gameplay, and the overall experience. Some of the games in that tier have had sound ideas but are simply broken, some have had performance issues that make them nearly impossible to play, and others have simply felt like cash grabs utterly lacking in ambition. Weirdly, I feel like Rise of Rana has come to the table with a sort of combo platter of those issues.

If I had to guess, the goal here was to set the stage for something resembling Grand Theft Auto in some primitive way. You’re in a city, you’ll be able to arm yourself, stealing cars (including from the cops) is pretty easy to do, and you’ll just be able to cause general mayhem. The problem is, the game is completely missing the pieces of the puzzle that would make any of that satisfying. You can punch or shoot people until you’re blue in the face but they aren’t going to go down. Bonus points for doing that in front of cops driving by and they won’t bat an eye. The physics in the game are next to non-existent, making collisions roughly akin to playing with toys and making crash sounds with your mouth as a kid at best. You can fly and roughly web sling as a hero, sort of, and in only the most bare bones way possible, but to what end since neither activity is ultimately rewarding or enjoyable? Is there a reason every roadway looks perpetually wet? Why do so many things in the game lack sufficient detail, but I can clearly see my character’s defined butt at all times in his tights? There’s just so many questions of why as you plod through this, but no satisfactory answers are offered aside from lack of effort or ability.

The thing is, there’s a template for making games that are so bad and broken that they’re somehow charming, which is the entire hook for the Goat Simulator franchise. The problem is that there’s purpose in their bugginess and wonky qualities, and they’ve leaned into those while making the systems around those bugs actually work. There’s no element of that here, it’s just all incomplete ideas, pop-in, clipping that runs rampant, and a lack of anything resembling fun. Slapping the description of “sandbox” on the game may explain why there’s no direction provided for play, but it doesn’t forgive this low-effort collection of assets packaged as something for people to spend money on in the eShop.