Developer: Point 5 Projects
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platform: PC
Bat Bots – Review
Robots, something mankind tends to be obsessed about. Creating new machines, some that resemble humans, giving them more possibilities to blend in.
They are also something mankind tends to boss around, to do their dirty work. What if rebellion kicks in, and they go mad? “Destroy all humans!”, does not seem that far off anymore then…
Story
You, Sam McRae wake up on the Titan, a once prestigious spaceship that has been reduced to hauling ‘garbage’, and you notice something it out of place. This something just so happens to be the death of pretty much everyone else aboard the ship. It soon becomes clear that the death of so many has been caused by the sudden rebellion of all the ship’s robots. Of course what would a massacre be without an evil robot mastermind running the show.
It’s your job to fight off hordes of evil robots, to destroy the evil power and to prevent the robots to wreak even more havoc outside of the ship.
In the end, it’s a pretty basic and common story, but it has its charms. Bad Bots delivers you this classic storyline with the use of fun animated comic books scenes, making it motivating to play until you come across the next scene.
Graphics
Bad Bots offers us a retro-styled theme that still feels refreshing. The environments, characters and items may seem as if they were created for on old school console, but still have the color schemes of several recent games.
The comic book styles scenes are the game’s main strength though. These scenes are worth playing the game for and sadly there aren’t more of them to get a complete book in the end.
Sound
The sound quality of the game also feels quite retro-ish and isn’t all too remarkable. The sound effect do the trick but the game has a lack of energetic music. The mood of an abandoned ship is set but some extra music would have been nice.
Gameplay
Bad Bots is a 2D action platforming scroller. It’s as simple as: ‘destroy all the robots and escape’. The game starts of simple with some smaller obstacles and a few enemy robots for you to dispose of in each room. As the game progresses you will encounter hordes and hordes of robots in single rooms which you will have to destroy to progress to the next room or area.
To aid you on your killing spree, you will have 2 types of weapons, namely melee and guns. Guns are once again divided in 2 categories, namely your standard pistol/rifle and special weapons. While your standard weapon(s) tend to remain stocked up ammo wise, your special weapons always come in limited supplies. It’s advisable to use your special weapons only for bosses or rooms that throw too many robots at you.
During your quite linear playthrough you will encounter several bosses which give you a pleasant change of scenery. Killing mindless robots is only fun for so long, but the bosses give it that extra edge. Like the bosses, save stations are scattered all over the ship for you to save your progress. When saving the game, your health will be replenished as well and you will live to fight another – day?
Having mainly played the game with a controller, it’s easy to say you will have to get used to the controls of Bad Bots and they sometimes might feel a bit lacking. Aiming with a controller takes a little practise, but in the end it will go quite smoothly. After trying out several controllers, a bug soon appeared – after killing an enemy robot – if you stop pressing the direction you’re aiming at. Your weapon will pretty much aim at a random direction after that. Jumping also takes some time getting used to, seeing it’s done by pressing your light stick up – making it harder to actually jump to the direction you want to. A feature that is easily solved by creating a separate button for jumping purposes.
After getting the hang of the controls, you will be up for several hours of pure robot massacre. The will test your survival skills and offers you: a set of simple, yet fun puzzles, short moments of backtracking to accomplish your new goal and a small variety of weapons that will surely pleasure you.
Conclusion
Bad Bots turned out to be fun 2D action game with a simple yet appealing storyline. For those who love retro games or those who like a comic book styled game, this game might be worth picking up. Prepare yourself to kick some robotic ass.
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