Ravage

Sometimes you pick up a game that looks like a simple tank shooter, and then it wants to blow your brains out. Ravage from 1996 is exactly that kind of case — in a DOS environment with an innocent graphical helmet hides a brutal action game that mercilessly drives you across a map full of obstacles and enemies.

You control a tank-like or robotic thing that must navigate through several worlds full of enemies, projectiles, and armor. It's basically an isometric shooter with roguelike elements — you move across the map, collect ammo and health, and when you're burning, you flash. Simple recipe, but Ravage serves it without restraint. Average enemies try to mow you down from all sides, and when you think you've got it covered, a barrage comes flying in from another direction.

Playing is frustrating in the way games from the mid-nineties tend to be — find the right rhythm, learn where enemies spawn, remember how to behave in every situation. The graphics are rough, the sounds pour out of the speaker like something that ended up there by accident, but that's exactly what gives the game some kind of barbaric charm. You don't have time to think — you're in non-stop survival mode, and once you get used to it, that frantic pace becomes fun.

Ravage isn't a graphics showcase, it's not intuitive either, but it has a piece of uncompromising arcade logic in it. Today you'd probably say it's a roguelike predecessor — you pick it up, you look around, you die, you try again. Back in '96, everyone who had a Sound Blaster and patience with the DOS command line enjoyed it.

If you're looking for a game that won't wrap you in cotton wool, that won't hold your hand, and that forces you to think at the pace of gunfire, Ravage is waiting in the browser. It's a rough, aged thing, but that's exactly what makes it interesting.