Rigid Force Redux from Headup Games and com8com1 is a fast-paced old-school infused shoot ‘em up on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Rigid Force Redux review!
Rigid Force Redux from Headup Games and com8com1 is a shoot ‘em up on Nintendo Switch that is a lot of fun to play. You’ll be joined on this new adventure by artificial intelligence PSYE, who has been designed to aid you on your mission. You’ll be taking control of a 3D spaceship as you enjoy a solid synthwave soundtrack that does a great job of complementing the action on the screen. As for your mission? First up, you’ll be tasked with defending a scientific facility that has sent a distress signal after being attacked, so you’ll need to rush into action to protect it.
The game includes a Main Mission Mode, which would be the Story Mode that Rigid Force Redux has to offer, and once you’ve unlocked them, you can also take on a Boss Rush Mode and an Arcade Mode. Boss Rush Mode, as the name suggests, will have you taking on all of the game’s bosses one after the other, as you try to do whatever it takes to survive until the end. The Arcade Mode has you chasing after the best highscore possible so that you can leave your mark in the game’s leaderboard.
As soon as you load up the game, Rigid Force Redux will send you into a tutorial so that you can learn all of the basics – there’s also the option of skipping the tutorial if you want to dive into the action. You’ll move your ship around with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, shooing with the B button. As you defeat enemies, they will release energy orbs, which you can collect by flying near them, or by using your attract skill by pressing the X or ZR button. You need to be careful when using the attract skill since this will slow down your ship. The energy orbs can also be used to activate a special skill with the A button that will get rid of enemy bullets while using a lot of your energy bar.
The good news is that attracting energy spheres will allow you to quickly up your energy bar at the bottom of the screen, which you can use to charge up your ship with the Y button, unleashing a more powerful and faster attack that can make short work of even the strongest of targets. As you play, you can collect weapon capsules to add new weapons to your ship. There’s the spread shot, which adds multi-directional attacks to your ship, the ground missile, which you can use to attack enemies beneath your ship, to name some examples.
The main armament of the ship can be changed around to spice things up, depending on which items you collect while the side armament can be upgraded to improve its overall performance. Collecting space shards can boost your main armament, increasing its attack power and effectiveness. Think of these as the power-ups you’d obtain in genre classics such as the R-Type series. You can have up to four shards active, and you can change their position with the L button to move them from the front to the middle, to the back, to the rear of the ship, so that you can target opponents all around you as you go, with the R button moving them from the rear to the front.
Rigid Force Redux features an in-game trophies system with 40 trophies in total to unlock as you progress through the game. They include objectives such as completing the game’s tutorial, beating each of the six stages in the game, destroying thousands of enemies, completing a stage without shooting at all, destroying all enemies of a specific type during different stages, getting an A rating on all stages, staying on the front part of a stage for ten seconds in a row without taking any damage, or defeating a boss with a fully charged energy bar without using it during battle, to name some examples. Oh, and there’s one final trophy you’ll get once you’ve obtained all the other 39 trophies – think of it as the equivalent of a Platinum trophy on a game on a PlayStation system.
You can customize your experience by changing the difficulty setting between Easy, Medium, or Hard, which makes it possible for players of different skill levels to take this one out for a spin. There’s also the option of balancing out the volume for the game’s music, voice acting, and sound effects, as well as configuring the strength of the rumble feature. The last option is for changing between the eight different languages for all in-game text, or the three languages for spoken dialogue.
Rigid Force Redux is a fun 3D shoot ‘em up with a solid synthwave soundtrack, and more than enough content to justify its asking price. With a Mission Mode, a Boss Rush Mode, an Arcade Mode, as well as an in-game trophy, this is an easy one to recommend on Nintendo Switch. Rigid Force Redux is out now on Nintendo Switch for $17.99.
Disclaimer
This Rigid Force Redux review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Headup Games.
