Video Game / Rat Hunter

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Butch Grid: Stiggs... this planet is bound to make me rich.

Rat Hunter is a 2006 sci-fi themed First-Person Shooter released by Russobit-M for the PC.

Set in some unspecified distant future, the player hero, Butch Grid, is a freelance journalist, private investigator and expert hacker attempting to investigate New Generation, a MegaCorp possibly dabbling in illegal genetics and cybernetics research in a remote outpost on Planet Spigs. Taking the role of a "rat hunter", supposedly an expert in containing infestations of alien life forms, Grid unfortunately finds himself knee-deep in a research center filled with mutated extraterrestrial creatures as well as cloned abominations developed by New Generation.

"The main thing in our business is to find the right way to solve the problem, and the right place to look for a clue."

• Addiction-Powered: That the game uses as a power-up method. Butch Grid can come across a high-tech, futuristic amphetamine called "Rum"; normally, Rum can be used as either a health restorative or to activate several seconds of Bullet Time, but when Butch overdoses on it by after using several consecutively, it blurs his vision greyscale, but also grants him the ability to One-Hit Kill human enemies with any attack and without requiring the use of guns (doesn't work on robots in the final stage though). It lasts only for a few seconds before "Rum" runs its effects dry and needs to be replenished.
• Almighty Janitor: Butch's cover story is that he's assigned to be a "rat hunter", or exterminator tasked with clearing the site of alien insects (of which there is plenty in the early stages). But then he uncovers a far more sinister plot and must fight his way out.
• Badass Bookworm: Butch is a journalist and freelance hacker, without any indication of him having any military background. Yet he can still kick all sorts of ass and can operate heavy weaponry, outgunning human mooks easily.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Compared to Russobit's previous outputs Kreed and Neuro (which was in fact released in the same year, just ahead by a few months). Humanoid enemies will fall apart into chunks of Ludicrous Gibs with ridiculous ease with almost every weapon, leaving behind bloody smears that stays in the area.
• Bottomless Magazines: While you still need to reload, there is no upper limit to the number of bullets you can carry on your person at once. By the end of the game it's not unusual to have way more than the 999 bullets the HUD tops out at for your firearms.
• Car Fu: One stage has Butch driving a weaponized buggy across a valley while using it's upper turret to take down sentry towers, other enemy buggies and flying drones.
• Cool Shades: Butch wears sunglasses 24/7, visible on the opening cutscene (the only time his face is shown in-game) as well as the cover art. In typical FPS fashion it doesn't translate into the game's first-person perspective.
• Faceless Goons: All the enemy mooks - the regular soldiers, henchwomen, overweight brutes - wears gasmasks or face-concealing gear, though this is likely due to budget reasons where Russobit doesn't need to design extra enemy types.
• Healing Potion: You can carry up to 15 capsules of Rum at once. Rum can be used to either restore 25 health, or activate several seconds of Bullet Time. After using several capsules of Rum, you overdose and enter a Super Mode.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The game has an early enemy resembling a pink, bipedal prawn-thing who runs circles around Butch while trying to spit projectiles until they're gunned down. From the third stage onwards, comes a larger version of the same enemy type with a dark green carapace who's far more durable, and also somehow faster.
• I'm Melting!: Somehow, the overweight humanoid mooks suffer this fate even if they're killed by bullets, where their bodies dissolves into a puddle of maroon liquid. Then again they might not be humans, especially when Butch uncovers a room full of those mooks in tanks being experimented on.
• Interface Screw: Butch experiences flashing images or vivid hallucinations periodically throughout the game. He initially chalks this up to lack of sleep, but as it turns out he has some kind of chip inside his head from a supposed New Generation whistleblower who was actually running a Xanatos Gambit.
• Left Hanging: After destroying the New generation's mechanical core - the game's sole boss enemy - the game then ends with a bunch of unanswered questions. Who is behind the experimentations of New Generation? Who is actually running the facility? And what are their goals? Why? The credits just roll in the next cutscene.
• Mook Maker: The first area is swarming with those orange, spider-like creatures who crawls all over Butch en masse until he killed them all. Then he reaches a lower level and finds the giant egg-like growth embedded on the ground, periodically spitting out those same spiderlings from earlier... blowing up the egg ends the first stage, he can encounter even more of those eggs in later levels.
• People Jars: Turns out the New Generation has been dabbling in some nasty experiments involving creating artificial humans, with one stage having Butch investigating the company's underground labs and coming across cylindrical glass tanks filled with green liquid with humanoids being grown inside.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Butch's "Rum"-granted ability appears to be psychic-based, allowing him to mince flesh-and-blood enemies into a bloody smear. But in a later stage containing robots, turns out the "Rum" only makes them stagger a bit but is otherwise useless against mechanical enemies - Butch needs to go back to his rockets and firearms.
• Plasma Cannon: One of Butch's last obtainable weapons is a Plasma blaster that releases purple crackling plasma energy. That leaves an indentation colored purple if it's projectiles hits a surface. It can also be charged to unleash a stronger blast capable of erasing groups of mooks.
• Safely Secluded Science Center: New Generation's covert laboratories where they're dabbling in experimentation on life-forms is located on another planet, Stiggs... though it's not immediately obvious and outdoor environments are mostly deserts or tundra, which still looks like Earth out-of-context.
• Unique Enemy: Those giant robots with razor-sharp pincers, immunity towards "Rum" and can tank a pile of damage before going down thankfully doesn't show up much. Only in the game's last quarter, countable on one hand.
• Vein-o-Vision: This happens whenever Butch overdoses on Rum after using several consecutively; the environment are greyscale and mooks are humanoid orange silhouettes.
• Villains Out Shopping: Butch comes across a nightclub where plenty of the game's recurring mooks are seen chilling and hanging out.