Rule No.1

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Rule No.1 is a First-Person Shooter released on PC in 2021 and ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game has you playing a young woman blasting away at waves of enemies in a rectangular arena.

I’m a bit torn on the presentation in this game. On the one hand, the game’s menus feature some really nice, colorful anime-style art, and as you’re fighting through the game’s your unnamed character will spout various lines of dialogue that give her a lot of personality. On the other hand, the game uses some pretty basic and unimpressive 3D visuals for its arena and geometric-shaped enemies, and then also introduces pixellated 2D enemies with a style that clashes with the rest of the game, backing all of this with an energetic but forgettable soundtrack. The result is very much a mixed bag.

The gameplay, also, seems somewhat poorly-conceived. This is a pretty simple and straightforward arena-based First-Person Shooter, the same sort of gameplay I lauded in Crossbow: Bloodnight. Unfortunately, unlike that game, there are some questionable design choices made throughout this game. Enemies spawn from all directions, and have a freedom of movement well beyond the rectangle you’re limited to. The AI isn’t especially bright, with most enemies just charging straight at you. However, because they’re coming from all angles, and don’t really make any noise to indicate when they’re near, you’ll find yourself repeatedly getting hit by enemies sneaking up behind you.

Players can blast boxes to pick up health refills and weapon upgrades, but these pickups inexplicably slide across the floor as if it was made of ice, necessitating players to tab the R button to pull in these pickups. It’s a bizarre and distracting choice, and I’m not sure why it was made.

The game does include multiple game modes to try to make up for its simplicity, but most of these game modes play pretty similarly. The only exceptions are one mode that has you using a throwing knife on enemies… which is less fun than the variety of weapons you get in other modes… and another mode that has you throwing a basketball at a hoop… something that quickly becomes dull and pointless.

For only $6, I could see some players getting a kick out of Rule No.1, but I think that money is much better-spent on one of the multiple better games in the genre on Nintendo Switch. At the very least, if you want an inexpensive game in this same vein, you’re much better off getting Crossbow: Bloodnight. It’s a shame too, because Rule No.1 does have some fun personality, but that’s not enough to make up for the game’s other shortcomings.

tl;dr – Rule No.1 is a simple First-Person Shooter where players take the role of a nameless gun-toting girl fending off waves of enemies in a rectangular arena. There are some fun presentation elements here, but there are also some lacking ones, and the gameplay itself features some questionable design choices. As an inexpensive First-Person Shooter, it’s a decent time-waster, but there are much better ones to be had, even at this game’s $6 discount price.

Grade: C

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