I am going to write an actual complete and honest review for this game. Haven't seen many to be honest. There is a TL;DR for those of you who don't read much.

To preface, these are the important specs of my PC:

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB VRAM
  
• Intel i7 3770 quad-core processor
  
• 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM

For starters, I run Bad Rats: Show at a solid 60fps maxed out at 1080p. So I'm not entirely sure where everybody's terrible performance is coming from, as my build is moderately dated now and can't run most recent games well at all. But I guess it's a per-system basis as I also have heard friends say they have varying performance.

Secondly, I have completed the entire game start to finish now, and throughout all 4 chapters I never once crashed. Again, possibly a per-system thing, but in this case none of my friends have had crashes either.

Performance wise, I give it an 8/10, simply because I know for a fact it has varying degrees of performance across systems, and it looks outdated.


Bad Rats: Show starts you off in 2-Dimensional levels for the first 3 chapters, then introduces a new mechanic in Chapter 4 where the level becomes 3-Dimensional, adding a new layer of difficulty to the puzzles. It also adds the ability to "fail" a puzzle by adding a limit to how much time you spend solving it/ how many times you run a test. Tests are also limited to 88 seconds, after which it ends the test you have to try to adjust your solution.

The announcer rat is there for comedic effect, but you hear most of his lines before even finishing Chapter 1. I quite enjoyed his ironically cheesy statements, and the accompanying heavy accent, but I know he can be a nuisance to others. It along with the soundtrack (which people find equally annoying) gave me the feeling that this was still truly a B-grade video game, but it was now self aware.

The chapters and stages do tend to get slightly more difficult, but very few (for me, it happened twice, although I beat them on my consecutive try) really get challenging to the point of failing it. Most levels throughout, though, are fairly easy to beat if you have simply the correct combination of rats. As for myself, I simply used any rat that would get the ball to a Jebus rat strategically placed near enough to the button that it would drop the ball right next to it. Jebus rat would then move the ball through platforms and next to the button, and I had the Pope rat/ Yoga rat behind the button to move the ball the last few inches and beat around 90% of the levels with that method, including the 3-D ones.

My one serious peeve of the entire game though was the camera in Chapter 4. The camera was easy to maneuver in Chapters 1-3, but Chapter 4 showed very evidently how broken the camera was for a 3-D environment. Several times I had trouble moving the camera to a position were I could place/move the rats efficiently. A few times it even flipped upside down, and I had to click the camera button to reset the camera and move normally again.

Lastly, I am surprised at the amount of comments and reviews on different sites about broken physics. The only way I passed every chapter so quickly was by recreating the same path over and over again and adding/adjusting rats until I got a correct result. The only rats I noticed that gave varying results on occasion were the Mafia rat and, rarely, the Flu rat. Otherwise, every rat gave the same result so long as you didn't rotate or move him. As the announcer rat says: " Small adjustments, big difference. " Moving a rat even one degree will 99% of the time result in a new outcomes.

I would rate the gameplay 6/10. The main deduction for me would be the broken camera that caused me frustration throughout Chapter 4; but as well, more complicated puzzles could have been made, and Jebus rat+Pope/Yoga rat was too powerful of a combo, and makes the entire game too easy and quick to beat, as you can tell from my 5.4 hrs.


"But... but it looks like a crappy PS1 game?"

Yes, yes it does. But that's why I'm giving it a 9. The devs have made a tiny few other games after Bad Rats: The Rats' Revenge, and they don't look half-bad or play bad either. But Bad Rats: Show looks dated, why? I could only imagine it's to keep their B-grade game feel as the music, voice acting, and in-game animations prove. They wanted to make something better, but keep the feel of the original solidly in place. I feel like they succeeded in doing so. Even if that wasn't their goal, the fact that I feel as if I'm only playing a somewhat upgraded Bad Rats: TRR makes me happy, in a morbid way.

The one reason it's a 9 and not a 10:
I very much wish the lighting were done more exuberantly. The world feels somewhat flat because of the lack of lighting in some spots.


Give the game a shot if you have a build stronger than mine. Amidst all the ironic reviews, I hope to be the one that helps people decide whether or not they want to ironically buy this for their friends, or to buy it as a serious game they want to play. It still feels like Bad Rats, but the key difference is, this one WORKS! As for it being a $5 purchase, it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to pay it. I did, and honestly don't regret it much.

Not a bad game, performs well (for my mid build), plays nicely, and works. Still looks and feels like Bad Rats, but better.

Better than F1 2020