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EatThePath's RoboBlitz (360)
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| [January 11, 2007 05:59:44 PM]
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Okay, I didn't even know the half of it when I posted before. This game rocks.
I got two new "weapons" which blew things wide open. Having them changes everything. First you get the Point-to-Point Beam, and a little later the much desired logical extension: the Tractor Beam. I'll briefly summarize these new tools but you can see them in action here in a demo/overview of the game.
Basically, the P2P beam lets you attach two things via a forcefield rubber band that looks like red electricity arcs. If you shoot one node onto a barrel, for instance, you can then shoot the connecting node to the ceiling and the barrel will shoot up and then hang. You can have five beams going at once, which lets you string objects together or, as I did first thing, paralyze all your enemies and tie them to the walls and each other. Then they tumble about once they unfreeze in a desperate sort of tug o' war. I've also used the P2P beam as a sort of reverse cannon. Attach the initial node to a box that's lying around, then wait for a baddie to come near. Then shoot the closing node onto the baddie and the box will come flying and brain him. Alternatively, close the beam onto a wall and anything in the way will get thumped. Perhaps my favourite ridiculous use so far was attaching so much stuff to a heavy flying guy that he shot his explosive projectiles point blank into the enveloping screen I had assembled for him to wear, eventually gunning himself down.
Once you've played with the P2P beam for a while, you quickly yearn for a simple addition: the ability to connect yourself! You get that ability in the tractor beam soon after acquiring the P2P beam, and at that point pretty much nothing can stop you. You can pull objects to you, or vice versa depending on weight, or fly to a ceiling, or in open areas with columns swing about like a vine-conveyed ape. Elevators, ramps, and ledges are obsolete! So is slowpoke motoring around; traverse vast distances in seconds with a preliminary boost-jump into a tractor beam swing from somewhere above you, and without touching the ground you've flown 100 meters!
Obviously it's a lot of fun to have so much power over your interactions with your environment. Which brings us to a crucial topic: the environments. There's a lot to talk about, however, so it'll be in the next installment. Suffice to say, most of that talk is good talk.
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| [January 10, 2007 04:16:19 PM]
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I don't know how to begin; I'm thinking of the most informative way to describe how much I like this game. Briefly, this game makes things as simple as they can be, which lets the game mechanics shine in open-ended glory rather than gum things up in a complex but limited set of interactions. RoboBlitz flirts with being in a few different genres, but essentially you navigate levels with some bad guys trying to complete an objective which usually boils down to "hit the switch(es)" but can sometimes be more complex. A standard recipe, except that all gameplay in RoboBlitz is based on complete interactivity with game objects in a real-time physics environment.
Take one of the preliminary “puzzle rooms” as an example. You come across a room that has two platforms connected by a pulley system. You realize through experimentation that in order to move the platforms (thereby opening new pathways), you have to put weighty objects on one in order to raise up the other. You can do this by using your grabber arms to carry small boxes with you into the room and deposit them onto the downgoing platform. This is your only choice, unless you have one of the more advance weapons, an antigrav tool. It fires small blobs that latch onto an object and make it levitate a few feet off the ground, until it wears out some seconds later. Among other things, you can use it to “grav-cart” heavy things in order to transport them easily. Indeed, the platform puzzle can be licked in short order if you move one of the nearer heavy boxes in this manner.
I’m having tons of fun playing this game because it challenges you in very unorthodox ways. It’s not hard to beat the bad guys; you can bash them with heavy objects, shoot them with a paralyzing EMP gun, blow them up with rockets, or just run away with your superior mobility. You can even float them with the antigrav blob gun, rendering the melee enemies harmless and immobile. The puzzles aren’t difficult either. You get plenty of hints if needed and the levels have plenty of indicators on where to go next. The only difficulty you face is deciding how you want to accomplish your goals. What are you goals anyway? Beat the level? Why? You can play around with eight floating boxes in a sort of one man soccer game. If a bad guy appears, shoot hit with the EMP gun, pick him up, and throw him into a pit. Go back to playing. Your options feel limitless. The only boundary you have is your own creativity. The fun is what you make.
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EatThePath's RoboBlitz (360)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 8 January, 2007
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