Shakedown: Hawaii

Genre: Top-Down Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Shakedown: Hawaii, like its predecessor Retro City Rampage, is an Open-World Top-Down Action-RPG, with this game first releasing in 2019 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch, with ports to PlayStation 3, Wii, and Wii U in 2020, and a port to mobile devices in 2024. It has the distinction of being the last game officially released for both the PlayStation 3 and the Wii.

Where Retro City Rampage was all about using its Grand Theft Auto-like Open World as a framing device for more Action-focused gameplay and tons of pop culture parodies, Shakedown: Hawaii places a much greater focus on its open world, and ditches the pop culture references in favor of an over-the-top satire of capitalism and consumerism.

This game has players alternate between three protagonists – the first is a greedy and scruples-free CEO who discovers that his business has gone to ruins since he retired to live off of its revenue, and takes it upon himself to make the company profitable again through any shady means possible. The second is the CEO’s son, Scooter, a lazy wannabe gangster who insists on calling himself DJ Jockitch. The third character is Al, a “consultant” the CEO hires to take on shipping cartels to secure the CEO better supply lines.

Of these three characters, the CEO is clearly the star of the show – his brash and forceful attitude is delightfully at odds with his absurdly out-of-touch lack of understanding of the modern world, and his dedication to pursuing any evil scheme he hears about would be despicable if it wasn’t so comically over-the-top. By comparison, Scooter has none of his father’s charisma or competence but all of his lack of moral character, making him a drag whenever the game’s story shifts to his point of view. Finally, Al is a quiet type who barely has a personality, and gets much less time in the spotlight than the other two characters.

When I say that this game is a satire of capitalism and commercialism, it leaves no stone unturned in its skewering of shady modern business practices. The CEO’s schemes through the course of the game run the gamut from predatory credit card offers to selling quack health supplements to taking shrinkflation to extremes and countless other all-too-familiar scams. And that is of course on top of the more direct crimes you’ll be committing while playing the game.

In many ways, Shakedown: Hawaii plays like the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to Retro City Rampage’s Grand Theft Auto III. The locale is more interesting and more fun to get around in, and there’s also much more to do within it even outside of missions – you can purchase businesses that forward you some income every day, shake down businesses you don’t own for protection money, invest in membership cards and other schemes that improve the earnings of your businesses. Take over a car lot and you can repo vehicles to earn money. Take over a coffee shop and you can steal competitors’ coffee trucks to make your shop more profitable.

With all of these new options in the Open World portion of the game, Shakedown still manages to retain some good variety in its standard missions too, though perhaps not quite as much as what was in Retro City Rampage. Still, the story is much stronger this time around, which makes up for anything this game lacks in its variety of missions.

The presentation is much better this time around too. Not only are this game’s 2D pixel art visuals far more detailed and nice-looking, but both the characters and backgrounds are fluidly-animated in a way that looks outstanding. This is all backed by an excellent synthesized soundtrack that works well for the game’s retro vibe.

It’s hard to find much to complain about in Shakedown: Hawaii. I suppose the game can still get repetitive at times, and I groan inwardly every time the game shifts over to Scooter’s side of the story. However, even with these issues, Shakedown: Hawaii is an outstanding Open-World Action-RPG, and one of the best attempts I’ve yet seen of taking the Grand Theft Auto formula and reverse-engineering it back into a Top-Down 2D game. if you enjoy Action, Open-World games, or witty satire, this is definitely a game well worth looking into.

tl;dr – Shakedown: Hawaii, like its predecessor Retro City Rampage, is an Open-World Top-Down Action-RPG that looks like a retro-style take on something like Grand Theft Auto. This game ditches the pop culture references in favor of a satire of capitalism, and places a much greater focus on its Open-World elements, and I think it’s a much better game for it. There are still areas I think it could improve on, but overall this is an excellent Open-World Action-RPG well worth picking up.

Grade: B+

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