RATSHAKER

I have been gawking at a blank page for a while, trying to figure out how to do RATSHAKER the justice that it deserves. This is a game that is every bit as quirky as it is weird and downright horrifying! This is a horror game and one of the strangest that I have played for quite some time. The idea of all your problems being solvable by shaking a cartoon rat is one of the most bizarre concepts I have ever heard for a video game. So much so that when I finished the game, I kind of just sat there, not sure what to think of this incredible and freaking weird ride that I had just been on.

Shake The Rat, Get Rid Of The Pests

Let me start by saying that the less you know about RATSHAKER, the better this experience is going to be for you. The game is kind of like a game within a game, as the previews told the story of a game called RATSHAKER that was trialed, but half the people who played it had strange things happen. We get to go on this very trippy ride with a device that is a carton rat, which if we shake it hard enough, has the power to change what is in front of us, light our way, and perhaps even alter our perception of life and the things we have done in the past.

Seriously, You Have to Shake The Rat!

RATSHAKER is played from the first person, and you move from area to area, and when there is something in your way or if you need to fix or interact with something, you shake the rat. The game controls find, and there are some people who would call this a walking simulator, and to be fair, I can see why. You are probably looking at two hours to see all that the game has to offer. As I said, I was kind of stunned when this came to an end, admittedly, the game was freaking weird, but the ending was a tad on the predictable side. Still, I was not sure of what I had just experienced, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was a game that I truly did enjoy.

Wait… Are These Walls Made Of….

The presentation of RATSHAKER is just as strange as everything else about this thing. You go from being in some “normal” place, be it a house or a field, to then being somewhere that appears to be made from flesh! It is a truly shocking thing to see the first time you see it. However, all the messed-up imagery that this game has is accompanied by a hilarious cartoon rat that will scream and yell in what sounds like an AI robot voice, which just helps add a whole lot to the charm and the overall weirdness of the game. There are also some great jump scares here, more than a few that I did not see coming, so they well and truly got me, and it was a lot of fun, even if my heart felt like it was about to leap right out of my chest!

And I Am Dead!

This is a short and shocking experience, and one of the best things that RATSHAKER manages to do is keep you on edge for pretty much the whole time you are playing the game! You can interact with things that will kill you or the rat, and then you have to reload to an earlier area. Some may say that this makes it so you do not want to explore, but I do not think that is the case at all, as it just makes you even more cautious and scared of every little thing. You know that there has to be something in an area you need to interact with or shake the rat at, if you will, but you also know that there is a very high chance something bad will happen as a result.

Pros:

• This is awesome if you love weird horror stuff
• The whole gimmick of the rat was so unique
• As well as the horror stuff, there is a lot of quirky and strange stuff here
• This is a great game to chat about with like-minded folks

Cons:

• Some of the kills do come out of nowhere and may feel unfair
• It is the kind of game that will certainly be too weird for some people