Growing up beat ’em ups were one of my favorite genres. The simple experiences were consistently good, and featured a number of beloved franchises. These ranged from The Simpsons, to X-Men, but we never got a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers experience on the same scale. With the genre making an unexpected return, Digital Eclipse hopes to correct that with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. With an overwhelming amount of nostalgia, can this be another genre classic, or does it fail to live up to the hype?
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind starts with Robo-Rita attempting to travel to the ’90s to aid her previous self in defeating the Power Rangers. Unfortunately, she is successful and is able to return to the past. From there players need to defeat some of the most notable villains of the first season, including the iconic Green Ranger arc, and stop Rita Repulsa.
While the narrative is pretty thin, it ultimately captures the vibe of the original series. This includes fun nods like Bulk and Skull appearing, to making sure to include the first monster, Bones. Even characters like Robo-Rita was first introduced in the 30th anniversary movie, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. All of this gives Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind a strong foundation, though gameplay is unfortunately on the weaker side.
The biggest issue with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind is the simple fact it wants to be a good Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game, instead of a great beat ’em up. As a result, the 15 stages are a weird hodgepodge of different genres/concepts.
Death Beam
In all there are like two driving, three Dinozard, and 10 beat ’em up stages. The driving stages are pretty simple. Players control a battle vehicle, and need to destroy targets without crashing. In all they’re not bad, it’s the Dinozard stages that are unenjoyable to play.
Every Dinozard stages suffer from three major issues. The first is the controls are not that great. Since aiming is largely tied to position, it forces players into bad spots. This can be especially bad when it warps the field of view, and makes it harder to avoid attacks. Both of these problems wouldn’t be that bad if these stages allowed for healing, and damage was lower. For example, there is a hard to avoid laser attack that does three damage, in a game where I have 10 HP.
In addition to the Dinozard section, these stages conclude with a quasi-Punch-Out brawl in the (Dino) Megazord. Said stages are impossible to fail, and feel rather tedious. This is because players are forced to be reactive. No matter how hard I tried to be aggressive, the enemy would take minimal damage, or just avoid it before returning fire. It isn’t until you bob, and weave attacks that openings appear. Even this would be fine if the beat ’em up sections were more fun to play.
Problems starts with surprisingly aggressive AI. Instead of having enemies mindlessly rush, they will break into groups that attempt to attack from both sides. This is a common way to increase difficulty in this genre, which can be circumvented with relative ease with a dodge roll, but it’s just one factor players need to pay attention to.
Long term stages add flying enemies, projectiles, and a wide variety of stage hazards. What will often happen is one of two things. Either I will take damage because I can’t cancel out of an attack with a dodge, or something will exploit the brief window between dodges.
That’s a Lot to Avoid
Take the image above. There is a laser to avoid, I can’t stand in the circle or I’ll get hit with rockets, I can fall over the edge, and there are enemies to fight. Thankfully, these persist for a finite amount of time for each section, plus they damage enemies, it just creates situations where taking damage feels inevitable. Especially when there are odd gameplay choices like removing the ability to move while grabbing an enemy.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind Review Verdict
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind: In a lot of ways Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind is in a weird spot. On a basic level I don't think it's a bad experience. It's clear a lot of time, effort, thought, and care went into making this experience. I mean, unlocking the Green Ranger adds him to cutscenes; the Pink Ranger's Pterodactyl flys creating unique challenges for those stages; to even utilizing the DualSense's speaker; but it simply isn't fun to play. Ideally it will improve in the future, as the foundation is absolutely there, though time will ultimately tell. – Grant
Editor’s Note: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind was reviewed on PlayStation 5, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.
