Ricky Recharge review

With lightning gun in hand, Ricky Recharge offers an appealing score-run. But with only a single environment, it’s not as electrifying as it could be.

Armed with a gun that emits arcing bolts of electricity, Ricky Recharge’s eponymous hero packs quite a punch. A few seconds of uninterrupted voltage will destroy any of the game’s robotic foes, who leisurely hunt you down like a horde of mechanized zombies. Polarity switching can be advantageous. As you swap between blue and red-coded weaponry, you’ll be able to wreck equivalently colored adversaries more efficiently and earn other perks.

Soon, you’ll understand where Ricky received his surname. On the far left and right peripheries of the game’s single, horizontally stretching stage are silos that refill your gun. Across a three-life game, you’ll shuttle back between the recharge stations, hoping you have enough juice so that you don’t get yourself surrounded. Like any respectable arcade-inspired game, that task grows increasingly tough.

Enemy numbers quickly escalate and shortly, new types of adversaries will begin appearing. If you don’t shoot the small, flying drones quickly they’ll denotate in a large blast that drains a portion of your health. Polarity advantages are forfeited against hulking yellow-colored robots, so you should engage them from a distance. Generally, you want to stay away from all of the game’s mechs, who pummel you like RoboCop after a shitty workday if you let them come too close.

Fortunately, your electric gun isn’t the only tool you’ll have access to. Combos of defeated enemies increase the occurrences of power-ups which offer temporary bonuses like stronger weaponry, slow motion, shielding, or some health. Ricky is also equipped with a limited supply of EMT detonations that will scuttle all adjacent enemies. And when you’re low on power and far from a recharging station, a slide with a substantial number of invisibility frames proves to be massively beneficial. On the far right side of the stage is a safe zone that sells additional perks in exchange for the currency dropped by overwhelmed foes.

At present, Ricky Recharge’s individual elements generally gel together quite well. Games generally last about fifteen minutes and are engaging enough to warrant a few replays, especially if you’re the kind of player who seeks a place on the off- and online leaderboards. While I thought Recharge might play like Kung-Fu Master with a lighting gun, the slower pace, perks, and unremitting need to refill your power supply all create distinction.

But that’s not to say that developer Team Recharge couldn’t make a few improvements to the game. One of the biggest issues is that Ricky Recharge’s stage doesn’t freely scroll and the perspective often becomes stuck on a doorway, recreating the tension of a survivor horror doorway. Although you’re given a regenerating ability to detect the color of an approaching adversary, it’s quite possible to inadvertently receive damage at these choke points. Perhaps the developers could provide a visual signal to warn of an awaiting enemy.

Another issue is that Ricky Recharge uses the left stick on your controller for aiming (at present, I can’t recommend mouse and keyboard control). Although it’s fine for zapping enemies on nearby staircases, it’s not effective for targeting airborne enemies. As such, it’s often easier to avoid these foes rather than tackle them directly, which can reset your combo multiplier. Team Recharge, if you’re not interested in right-stick aiming, please consider incorporating a bit of auto-aim. Getting into a position to shoot down drones from an angle isn’t always possible when surrounded by enemies. One last nitpick: when you’re given the sporadic opportunity to ride atop a compromised enemy, you don’t feel all that powerful. Let me wreak havoc as arcing bolts of electricity fill the screen.

As it stands, Ricky Recharge’s single stage is well realized. Instead of taking place in the typical sterile environment, the game is set in a sprawling house, with a wonderfully detailed basement and yard bordering a series of interconnected rooms. The level is rendered in black and white, making the polarity and robot coloring jump off the screen. Interestingly, there’s some lasting damage and you’ll often see Ricky trudge across the screen punting defeated enemies around. As good as the visuals are, it would be great to see extra levels that could provide additional variation.

On Steam Deck, once a shader cache is generated, Ricky Recharge runs at a steady 60 frames per second. Pleasingly, the game isn’t too much of a battery hog, and a full three and a half hours of play are available on a fully charged Deck. Sonically, the dubstep soundtrack adds energy, even if it’s rather unremarkable. Although it only happens a few times each game, Ricky’s death screech borders on being annoying.

Ricky Recharge has most of the fundamentals of a pick-up-and-play action title. Save for a few control annoyances, exterminating waves of lumbering robotic enemies with a lightning gun is enjoyable for a few days. But before long, the fatigue associated with a single-level score chase emerges, and you’ll probably wish Ricky had more stages or even some kind of meta-game reward system. Wait for a sale to avoid being overcharged by Recharge.

Ricky Recharge was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.