Megaton Rainfall review for PS4, PC

On a purely conceptual level, Megaton Rainfall is amazing. It’s basically the Superman game we’ve never had, a first-person superhero game where you fly around the world saving cities and civilians from aliens and robots. It’s the sort of thing that lots of people (myself included) have been craving for a long time, so it’s awesome to see a developer step up to the plate to try their hand at it — particularly when you consider that they’re an indie studio who, presumably, don’t have the kind of budget you’d think a larger developer with access to actual superhero IPs might bring to the table.

The good news is that Pentadimensional have not only come up with a concept, they also, by and large, deliver on it. Even playing the game on a regular PS4 — that is, not with a PSVR — flying was amazing. It felt amazing to soar over oceans and mountains, to rocket into space, and to dive into the sea. I honestly can’t recall a game that makes you feel like you’re flying as well as Megaton Rainfall does.

Likewise, it really delivers on giving you godlike powers. You can shoot energy blasts from your hands to vaporize enemies, and…well, it’s pretty cool. I mean, I could try to wax poetic about it, but the truth is, zapping spaceships is just plain fun, the kind that you don’t need to justify or think all that deeply about. It just works, and works really well.

Best of all, Megaton Rainfall actually gives your actions moral weight. It bestows all these incredible powers on your character, and then follows through on the “great responsibility” part of the famous Spider-man quote. Every time one of your blasts misses an enemy and goes crashing through a building, little text pops up on screen and tells you how many people you just killed. If too many people die, you fail, and have to start over again from the previous checkpoint. It may not sound like much, but it’s the sort of thing most superhero-related media — not just games, but comics and movies too — completely overlook.

The problem, of course, is that weighing civilian lives and moral calculations into your actions is actually kind of a drag. I know that’s the point of the game, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating when you vaporize a spaceship that’s trying to blow up a city block, only to realize too late that you’ve overdone it and actually vaporized the entire city in the process. Like, it’s a valuable life/game lesson, to be sure, but it also makes it apparent why more games/media don’t spend too much time focusing on those issues.

I don’t want to fault the game too much for doing it, though. Megaton Rainfall is the kind of superhero game I’ve always wanted to play, and even if it’s not perfect, it’s still an interesting step in the right direction for the genre as a whole.

Pentadimensional Games provided us with a Megaton Rainfall PS4 code for review purposes.