Shakedown: Hawaii
Developer/publisher VBlank Entertainment Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Vita Release Out now
PC, PS4, Switch, Vita
Just as the Bolivian government got stroppy about the country’s portrayal in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, it’s fair to say the Hawaiian tourist board won’t be writing a thank-you letter to Brian Provinciano anytime soon. His follow-up to Retro City Rampage paints the island as a hive of hooligans and delinquents, gangs and maniacs – and, more pertinently, deeply unscrupulous CEOs looking to revive their flagging empires through exploitative (if not wholly illegal) practices.
You are one such businessman, a greying, pot-bellied suit who uses news stories about local crime as business plans: after a bulletin exposes a repossession racket, he heads out to jack a car and re-lease it, setting up the first of a series of lucrative income opportunities in an aggressive expansion across Hawaii. What follows is basically GTA if it existed in the Mega Drive era, though the range (and brevity) of its missions often makes it feel more like WarioWare with a plot. You’ll shake down small businesses to bolster your income, burn down markets with flamethrowers to boost nearby property values and hop over the border to play a Mexican associate who ‘recovers’ farms from the local cartels.
As a satire of capitalism, it’s effective if heavyhanded. Your get-rich-quick schemes are frequently
scuppered, but ultimately your empire will grow, as will your profits. Through its property management systems, it allows you to indulge in gentrification – buy groups of houses to create a shortage and the prices increase. With hired lobbyists and clickbait ads acting as profit multipliers, your income soon spirals upward, giving you yet more money to buy costlier businesses and gradually make the entire island your own. If its endgame feels like a hollow victory, that’s because it’s supposed to.
It would be the feelbad game of the year if it weren’t so grimly funny. Provinciano takes aim at everything from the price of HD movies to targeted web ads, lootboxes, day-one patches and the rebranding racket that is ‘superfoods’. Its bluntness makes Rockstar look like Dorothy Parker, but it boasts an appealingly silly streak, with its rhythm-action glute workouts and tawdry gameshow auditions. Even its standard missions throw up entertaining twists: one shakedown has you stuffing paper towels down a toilet to clog up the pipes.
Save for a quite brilliant soundtrack there’s no one standout element, though the non-stop pace gives it a moreish momentum. Whether its lack of challenge is an attempt to say something about the nonexistent hurdles faced by the mega-rich is anyone’s guess. Either way, we’re hardly complaining – a sandbox where waypoint distances are measured in pixels, and journeys are over in seconds, is surely one worth celebrating.