Reservoir Dogs

The Good
Reservoir Dogs is probably my favorite movie, as well as the favorite of a few of my friends. It was a surprise to me that, around sometime last year, I found out that they release a game for it like 14 years after it was released.

The game's levels takes place in-between moments from the movie. Fills in some blanks between the heist and the end. I thought some of them were fun to see, like writing in what happened to Mr. Blue and driving around as Mr. Brown after getting shot in the head. The driving levels in particular are pretty fun to see since they incorporate some of the iconic moments like Mr. Orange getting shot and Mr. Blonde kidnapping a cop. I liked the more original stuff as well, like the tutorials were actually kinda nice since it was just the characters training Mr. Orange and bickering at each other.

The gameplay isn't anything spectacular, but it has some interesting mechanics. You can order around npcs by threatening them with a gun and controlling them with the right stick: they can be used to open doors locked from the inside, open safes, and enter codes into locks (otherwise you'd have to break them and sound an alarm). The hostage mechanics have a bit of depth to them: civilians can be threatened easily, security guards will only drop their weapons if you are holding a hostage, and police/swats will only drop their weapons if you beat your hostage. Every hostage has health that decays while you hold or control them, and drops when you beat them until they pass out. As little as it makes sense for an unbeaten person to just pass out by being told to move somewhere and open a door, it does keep the player from slowly dragging the same dude around for the whole level so I'm fine with it.

Something about this game that I wasn't expecting was that it had different endings (kinda). How do you achieve them? Playing every level will change your rank on a scale depending on how much you kill. If you kill as little as possible, you're a Professional; if you kill pretty much everyone, you're a Psychopath; in between the two, you are a Career Criminal. A somewhat interesting mechanic that adds some replayability, and the idea would be shamelessly stolen by Toby Fox 9 years later.

(Spoilers) The different rankings will give you 1 of 3 scenes during the credits, showing what happens to Mr. Pink after leaving the scene at the end of the movie. He either escapes, gets arrested, or gets killed. I thought it was kinda neat, since what happened to him in the movie was really vague, and it all of them could have potentially happened.

The Bad
The stuff I liked were executed in a pretty underwhelming way.

I liked the style and story of the driving levels, but some of them have pretty tight restrictions to beat, and they are REALLY hard to get any ranking other than "Career Criminal" on. I got the "Professional" rank on the Mr. Blonde level somehow, meanwhile I was "Career Criminal" on the first driving level after blowing up 30 different cars with my gun (a level where you don't need to shoot anything).

As interesting as the hostage mechanics are, they get REALLY stale when you're doing a Professional run. You just grab a guy, yell at other guys to get against the wall, smack your hostage on the head to make cops drop weapons, put the cops against the wall, rinse and repeat. It got so repetitive that I understood the mechanics to a T. I realized that hostages were like, a gun that shot invisible "put gun down" bullets at cops that penetrated, so I would line the cops up and fire the hostage at them. If you don't care to unlock all the cheats or see all the really brief endings, just play it like any 3rd person shooter.

The Bottom Line
If you're a fan of the movie, I'd say it's worth a shot. If not, you'll likely not care much for it. Don't expect anything groundbreaking or for it to be a hidden gem, it's more like a bit of quartz in a yard full of gravel. As a fan, I appreciate what it did.