Parents' Guide to RAD

Imagine a cross between classic dungeon crawlers -- such as Diablo III -- and games with random world generation -- like The Binding of Isaac -- and you know what you're in for here. RAD has a terrific sense of style, sporting fun character and world design, a narrator with a comically baritone voice and an endless repository of slang terminology, and a soundtrack filled with original songs clearly inspired by late 1980s pop music. It's also easy to get into, with intuitive controls for movement and attacks and persistent on-screen directions to remind you of what's currently in your constantly changing arsenal of attacks and abilities. Those attacks and abilities seem almost endless, thanks to a huge array of possible mutations and augmentations, which -- along with the randomly generated worlds -- help ease the sense of repetition when your character dies and you're forced to restart from scratch.

That said, there's still an undeniable deflation that occurs when you eventually succumb to the horrors of the wasteland. Whether you had a particular love for specific mutations you acquired or managed to get farther along in your quest than ever before, you're bound to wish you could just go back to a save point a few moments before your death so that you could try again and keep all that you've earned. Thankfully, the developers aren't so heartless that they strip players of everything upon death. You can deposit cassettes in the bank that remain available as currency for future heroes, and when you die, you're shown a sort of achievement-like list of things you've unlocked that are accessible (for a cost) to the next teenager to take on the quest. RAD is a blast to start, filled with little smile-inducing details and a sense of discovery. Whether that feeling persists over the long haul will depend on the player's reaction to getting repeatedly kicked back to the starting line.