Something I forgot to mention in the video (but put in the CC) is that yes, there IS a demo! It goes through the entire first chapter of the game (first 4 levels and boss), so it should be more than enough to get a feel for the game and if it’s for you. Mad Rat Dead is available only on Switch and PS4 at the moment.
One thing I think you should've noted is what the triangles do. They restore one beat on your time limit which is really hard to notice and it's never explained that that's what they do either.
Fun Fact: you might notice that there's two sets of arrows on nightmares when you lock onto them, orange ones and blue ones. Those actually tell you which attack you can use on it: orange is jump and blue is slam. The slam attack actually has just as wide a range as the jump, and it even covers slightly above you too! I play this game too much, that's how I know
As someone who likes both, FNF is free and on PC, which is more widely accessible than the consoles it's on. This and mod support would definitely give FNF a run for it's money (well, porting and mod support at least)
13:44 Plash, Plop, Gurgle honestly sounds like "You won the game show! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" except in song form and it's AMAZING and i am SO GLAD EVERYBODY ELSE APPRECIATES IT
The music in this game is debatable whether or not it's diegetic, because the music is in Mad Rat's head, it's how he keeps his beat to move. And I love that.
WHOA there's a lot of stuff in here about MRD that I just didn't know - like the fact that the game lets you keep your combo if you stop moving and need to think ahead, that would be a LIFESAVER for me. I'm just recently getting into the game thanks to a certain mashup album (COUGH Mad Rat Monday) and honestly I think your video convinced me to give it a shot myself instead of just listening to the soundtrack over and over
That is the exactly what I love about MRD and made it different with Crypt of The Necrodancer. In CoTN you need to keep moving nonstop to the beat to keep your combo going, it’s sometime stress me out.
I have one more mayor criticism of the core gameplay: With the dashes, as your main movement, having a set length and the attack homing in on stationary targets the levels are almost designed around a hidden movement grid, this means it plays great as long as you are where the designers expect you to be but if you are not some situations can be really frustrating. There is, for example, a level with rising and lowering water in the park that has ramps leading into the flooding and draining area. On three out of four tries I'd dash to the edge of the water and then jump over it, but every once in a while I would be just a millimetre or two on screen ahead of my normal pacing and Rat would die from dipping his front paws into water. These spacing problems can occur at almost any part of the game and feel awful because they are a delayed punishment for very slight hiccups in your movement.
I ABSOLUTELY adore Mad Rat Dead it’s probably one of/if not my favorite Rhythm game, not to mention it’s a platformer too which is my favorite genre. I love the designs for all the characters I love them all from Mad Rat himself, Heart and the Rat Goddess who is waifu, and all the music slaps!
This game is so criminally obscure more people should be talking about it and trying it out so more know how wonderful it is. I as well was surprised how invested I got into the story and the handful of characters it has for being a rhythm game, it definitely looks like the game and the music was worked around the plot rather than the other way around.
when a song is made by camellia, you know it's going to be good and difficult at the same time, also you get an extra charge after homing attacking an enemy too, so you can air stall into a homing attack
i agree with every single point made in this video. the entire time i watched it i kept saying "yeah true. you're right. i agree" this game is so so so so so so so good it's my favorite game of all time and it lives rent free in my head it deserves so much love, its honestly everything i love in a game in a nice package. i remember agonizing over my purchase when it was reccomended to me, but immediately changed my tune when i started playing, i was HOOKED. i love mad rat dead everyone on earth should play it
Having beaten the game, I find myself unable to resist moving to the beat of these songs, whenever I hear them. The soundtrack is downright divine. My favorites that were not already mentioned are Passion in Blue and Kind of Hope, though that may be because of the emotional baggage attached to them.
8:05 They do kind of give a soft tutorial on this in the second level by baiting you into doing a slam blind into a pit onto the enemy, though it can be missed if you don't do that
This video was also a Rhythm Gamer's Delight! Mad Rat Dead is a game that really took me by surprise with its quality and emotional pull, I'm glad it's getting the recognition it deserves! Lovely video!
7:45 I think, it's a good thing, the game does not tell you every little detail about the movement. All the moves are explained in the tutorial, but how and where you can use them, is not told. It's the same in Celeste. Most people probably don't find out about the wall jump while up dashing or wave dashing by themselves, but if they do, they can do a lot with their new found moves. It's almost like little secrets.
What a great review! I completely agree with almost everything you've said here. With a lovely and sometimes disturbing story, a killer soundtrack by some big Japanese Producers, AND a lovely art style, Mad Rat Dead does an incredible job of turning a normally frustrating rhythm game into a delight. My only thing would be that I personally enjoy the boss levels. While ones like the lab rats can be annoying because theres little to show to the player the next attack, I like the fact they're more thought and strategy based compared to levels. (I also think the boss songs are some of the best on the OST: Bad Feeling, Ghost, Mimolette, Mad Heart are *Chef kiss* And the way Mad Rat, Die ties all previous songs while remixing the innocent theme of Mad Rat Alive is so good) And in regards to the final boss, as difficult as it is, it never feels unfair and it tests your skills well. Thanks for summing up the game so well!
Genuinely such a good game and I think it flew under the radar because it released in the midst of the 2020 COVID pandemic :( I beat this in under two days, and I'm a guy who rarely finishes games at ALL. I think the only level I ever consistently ran out of time on was the final boss. The soundtrack is amazing and I had to stop myself from over-listening to it so I wouldn't get tired of it. Love to see more people talk about this little game! I might re-buy it just to play it on a different console.
as a massive Mad Rat Dead fan who's been silently obsessing over the game for YEARS, it's so nice to finally see someone talking about this painfully underrated work of art!! thank you :]
this game is underrated as hell IMHO, even if mostly just for the bangin soundtrack and satisfying gameplay the aesthetic is really really good too, i love how funky the enemies look! and the sudden bursts of mild horror, oh that's the good stuff
quit making me want to buy a game with money i don’t have 😭 this video has reeaally convinced me more to get this game so i guess that makes it a successful video lol
I think the game tries to hint at this with the part at the end of the tutorial where you start the next scene by pressing L&R, but I only realized that was what they were trying to do toward the end of my first playthrough
I always thought, the game was too easy. Or at least the rank was too forgiving. I often felt like I didn't get into the beat et all, but I still get rank A in the end, because I almost always get S rank for getting enough "great", just for getting about most of the beats right, I get A rank for remaining beats, even when you're bad it's often more than 100, and the combo is the most difficult thing to get right, I normally have rank B. On average this will still be A. I would have liked a few more blocker levels which are so annoying that I replay the first few levels to get used to the controls and then finally finish the next level. About 100 less beats per level would have been the solution. That's what I liked so much about Gitaroo man. I was so bad at the beginning and it took me days to finish a single song for the first time. And when going back to the earlier songs, it was so much easier. And then when starting hard mode, it was the same again. Here I would finish almost every level in hard mode, I just would get a bad rank, at least not S most of the time.
Something I forgot to mention in the video (but put in the CC) is that yes, there IS a demo! It goes through the entire first chapter of the game (first 4 levels and boss), so it should be more than enough to get a feel for the game and if it’s for you. Mad Rat Dead is available only on Switch and PS4 at the moment.
One thing I think you should've noted is what the triangles do. They restore one beat on your time limit which is really hard to notice and it's never explained that that's what they do either.
Fun Fact: you might notice that there's two sets of arrows on nightmares when you lock onto them, orange ones and blue ones. Those actually tell you which attack you can use on it: orange is jump and blue is slam. The slam attack actually has just as wide a range as the jump, and it even covers slightly above you too!
I play this game too much, that's how I know
Huh, I didn’t even think of that! That’s neat, I learned something new today. 😄
Also the slam sends you up higher than the jump attack after you hit a nightmare!
"outside" [I START CRYING]
Honestly, I feel like this game should've been in the place of FnF, while both games are good, this game deserves it a lot more.
As someone who likes both, FNF is free and on PC, which is more widely accessible than the consoles it's on. This and mod support would definitely give FNF a run for it's money (well, porting and mod support at least)
"Flaws" section begins
*Bad Feeling in the background*
:)
oh snap never expect to see my animation asset in there 5:05
You are the person to bring me back into Mad rat dead everyday
@@LunaMinuna Exactly! Am so glad to see peeps getting to know this game and loving the aesthetic!
Oh my god just know you did amazing
13:44 Plash, Plop, Gurgle honestly sounds like "You won the game show! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" except in song form and it's AMAZING and i am SO GLAD EVERYBODY ELSE APPRECIATES IT
The music in this game is debatable whether or not it's diegetic, because the music is in Mad Rat's head, it's how he keeps his beat to move. And I love that.
WHOA there's a lot of stuff in here about MRD that I just didn't know - like the fact that the game lets you keep your combo if you stop moving and need to think ahead, that would be a LIFESAVER for me. I'm just recently getting into the game thanks to a certain mashup album (COUGH Mad Rat Monday) and honestly I think your video convinced me to give it a shot myself instead of just listening to the soundtrack over and over
That is the exactly what I love about MRD and made it different with Crypt of The Necrodancer. In CoTN you need to keep moving nonstop to the beat to keep your combo going, it’s sometime stress me out.
PANASONIC BLUE RAY
PANASONIC BLUE RAY
PANASONIC BLUE RAY
CHRISTMAS IN JULY!!!
plash, plop, gurgle sounds victorious because in the rats eyes he has finished his mission in killing the scientist
That clip where you're going all in a song then come back to kill an enemy you missed never fails to crack me up
I have one more mayor criticism of the core gameplay:
With the dashes, as your main movement, having a set length and the attack homing in on stationary targets the levels are almost designed around a hidden movement grid, this means it plays great as long as you are where the designers expect you to be but if you are not some situations can be really frustrating. There is, for example, a level with rising and lowering water in the park that has ramps leading into the flooding and draining area. On three out of four tries I'd dash to the edge of the water and then jump over it, but every once in a while I would be just a millimetre or two on screen ahead of my normal pacing and Rat would die from dipping his front paws into water. These spacing problems can occur at almost any part of the game and feel awful because they are a delayed punishment for very slight hiccups in your movement.
I ABSOLUTELY adore Mad Rat Dead it’s probably one of/if not my favorite Rhythm game, not to mention it’s a platformer too which is my favorite genre. I love the designs for all the characters I love them all from Mad Rat himself, Heart and the Rat Goddess who is waifu, and all the music slaps!
This game is so criminally obscure more people should be talking about it and trying it out so more know how wonderful it is.
I as well was surprised how invested I got into the story and the handful of characters it has for being a rhythm game, it definitely looks like the game and the music was worked around the plot rather than the other way around.
My fav part about Stilton is that you can hear the clicking like when you land notes
I love this game so much too bad the American publishers don’t care about the game
when a song is made by camellia, you know it's going to be good and difficult at the same time, also you get an extra charge after homing attacking an enemy too, so you can air stall into a homing attack
i agree with every single point made in this video. the entire time i watched it i kept saying "yeah true. you're right. i agree" this game is so so so so so so so good it's my favorite game of all time and it lives rent free in my head it deserves so much love, its honestly everything i love in a game in a nice package. i remember agonizing over my purchase when it was reccomended to me, but immediately changed my tune when i started playing, i was HOOKED. i love mad rat dead everyone on earth should play it
This game,,, i need it,,, i love the funny rat
Having beaten the game, I find myself unable to resist moving to the beat of these songs, whenever I hear them. The soundtrack is downright divine.
My favorites that were not already mentioned are Passion in Blue and Kind of Hope, though that may be because of the emotional baggage attached to them.
heart aka the anthesis of a heartless hes just a heart
8:05 They do kind of give a soft tutorial on this in the second level by baiting you into doing a slam blind into a pit onto the enemy, though it can be missed if you don't do that
This video was also a Rhythm Gamer's Delight! Mad Rat Dead is a game that really took me by surprise with its quality and emotional pull, I'm glad it's getting the recognition it deserves! Lovely video!
7:45 I think, it's a good thing, the game does not tell you every little detail about the movement. All the moves are explained in the tutorial, but how and where you can use them, is not told.
It's the same in Celeste. Most people probably don't find out about the wall jump while up dashing or wave dashing by themselves, but if they do, they can do a lot with their new found moves.
It's almost like little secrets.
What a great review! I completely agree with almost everything you've said here. With a lovely and sometimes disturbing story, a killer soundtrack by some big Japanese Producers, AND a lovely art style, Mad Rat Dead does an incredible job of turning a normally frustrating rhythm game into a delight.
My only thing would be that I personally enjoy the boss levels. While ones like the lab rats can be annoying because theres little to show to the player the next attack, I like the fact they're more thought and strategy based compared to levels. (I also think the boss songs are some of the best on the OST: Bad Feeling, Ghost, Mimolette, Mad Heart are *Chef kiss* And the way Mad Rat, Die ties all previous songs while remixing the innocent theme of Mad Rat Alive is so good) And in regards to the final boss, as difficult as it is, it never feels unfair and it tests your skills well.
Thanks for summing up the game so well!
Genuinely such a good game and I think it flew under the radar because it released in the midst of the 2020 COVID pandemic :( I beat this in under two days, and I'm a guy who rarely finishes games at ALL. I think the only level I ever consistently ran out of time on was the final boss. The soundtrack is amazing and I had to stop myself from over-listening to it so I wouldn't get tired of it. Love to see more people talk about this little game! I might re-buy it just to play it on a different console.
as a massive Mad Rat Dead fan who's been silently obsessing over the game for YEARS, it's so nice to finally see someone talking about this painfully underrated work of art!! thank you :]
this game is underrated as hell IMHO, even if mostly just for the bangin soundtrack and satisfying gameplay
the aesthetic is really really good too, i love how funky the enemies look! and the sudden bursts of mild horror, oh that's the good stuff
1:24 You're right. Even my favorite story based music game Gitaroo Man has a story about music, even if it might not be considered the main focus.
quit making me want to buy a game with money i don’t have 😭 this video has reeaally convinced me more to get this game so i guess that makes it a successful video lol
I love this game when i heard about i got it the switch version that is
I've been looking for a good rythem game for my switch, and this looks pretty fun. Thanks for the review.
the game also has one of my favorite fonts, rowdy
8:26 really?! Ok this I didn’t know that’s unfair
I think the game tries to hint at this with the part at the end of the tutorial where you start the next scene by pressing L&R, but I only realized that was what they were trying to do toward the end of my first playthrough
YEA!!!! I LVOE THIS GAME SO MUCH DESPITE NEVER PLAYING IT!! THE OST IS JSUT SO GOOD I LOVE IT IT HAS SOME OF THE ABSOLUTELY BANGER SONGS EVER!!
it feels like the footage in this video is just randomized, but otherwise, great vid
Great video!
pssst if you like rhythm games check out hifi rush, its such stupid fun
Mad rat dead is the only game ive bought because of the music
Camelia is like the 0w0 of music he's everywhere just like 0w0 in the comments
I always thought, the game was too easy. Or at least the rank was too forgiving. I often felt like I didn't get into the beat et all, but I still get rank A in the end, because I almost always get S rank for getting enough "great", just for getting about most of the beats right, I get A rank for remaining beats, even when you're bad it's often more than 100, and the combo is the most difficult thing to get right, I normally have rank B. On average this will still be A.
I would have liked a few more blocker levels which are so annoying that I replay the first few levels to get used to the controls and then finally finish the next level. About 100 less beats per level would have been the solution.
That's what I liked so much about Gitaroo man. I was so bad at the beginning and it took me days to finish a single song for the first time. And when going back to the earlier songs, it was so much easier. And then when starting hard mode, it was the same again.
Here I would finish almost every level in hard mode, I just would get a bad rank, at least not S most of the time.
yeah fnf is too boring