If Rampage and Metal Slug produced an unholy offspring, it might resemble something like Destructopus: Total Rampage. The game’s presentation is very telling of its personality: a double-bass-fueled metal song plays over the intro while a cartoonish silhouette wreaks havoc on the ruins of a city in the background, with an animation style that’s close to squigglevision.

Then there’s the destructopus itself, a gargantuan cephalopodic cyclopean creature who exists solely to terrorize the world with its massive maw and claw-like tentacles. This is basically what Destructopus is all about: pure wanton destruction. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t quite live up to either the originality of the creature or the amount of love and care that was clearly put into this interesting little iOS title.

If you squint, you can make out the eye-lazer beam of death wreaking havoc on that rooftop.

The problem starts with the destructopus’ size, which keeps it grounded (and, sadly, mostly out of sight) at all times. The controls are very Rampage-simple, as you smash buildings, kill civilians and military personnel, and fight off various heavy weaponry that would be used against the monstrous beast. The destructopus can either bite (high attack) or claw swipe (low attack) as well as use special abilities like freeze rays and fire-breath using an aiming reticule you might find in a dual-stick shooter.

However, given the monster’s size and relative speed of its attacks, the game’s difficulty ramps up quickly. Each stage will award a max amount of points depending on how much destruction you’ve caused, calculated both by thoroughness (make sure you raze those buildings and shoot those choppers down) as well as by a timed combo multiplier.

You can buy new monstrous abilities between levels.

Since the destructopus is somewhat slow, dodging attacks by ducking is hard enough -- charging forward and backward would be a good strategy, but double-nudging a touch-based D-pad in the same direction is next to impossible. Your attack buttons are pretty close together as well, meaning you’ll accidentally be hitting high when you wanted to hit low, or vice-versa, fairly often.

Also, much like Rampage, Destructopus is repetitive. You can sort of shake things up by buying new abilities between levels, but the game’s design is pretty apparent from the get-go. Destructopus’ personality is great -- we just wish there was more to it.

Fire breath!

The bottom line. Destructopus is a too-simple arcade title that, thanks to some wonky controls and a lack of balance, is probably less than the sum of its parts.