Wow, they sure did spend a lot of time establishing a plot in the beginning of this game. I sure hope they don't immediately drop it as soon as gameplay starts...
womp.
womp.
wooooooomp.
But I digress. Remember all those space shooters like CUB3 and the other ones whose names I don't feel like digging through my archives to remember? Rock Station is that except instead of fighting a bunch of enemies designed to be enemies (you know the kind, like the little ones that take 1 hit to kill and those big leviathan battle cruisers), you fight AI-controlled ships that are all playable. It's like a fighting game, but in space and with lasers.
The game uses the same basic control scheme as CUB3 and Star Wars: Battlefront, you know. That lot. It works decently when you figure out how to use it, but it's not without its problems. First off, I had no idea how much health I had, but I was pretty sure I was getting hit more often that I was landing hits, so shouldn't I have lost that battle? Well I didn't. My opponent was turned into space dust.
Anyway, aiming your lasers is a bitch because they barely travel faster than the ship (which I guess would make sense, considering we're dealing with faster-than-light travel), so by the time you've figured out how far ahead of your opponent you have to aim in order to hit them, they've made some sort of sharp turn that you couldn't hope of pulling off in your wildest dreams, and once again, you're left to try desperately to figure out how to get behind an opponent while they're zipping around like mosquitoes and you're trying to deal with the world's least helpful GUI.
The graphics are nice, though. The characters are all incredibly stylized anime characters that look like they were drawn professionally. Apart from that, it's good to see 3D art that doesn't look like it could be accurately recreated with a few sheets of construction paper (looking at you, Robox). And speaking of Robox, the sound effects in this game didn't want to make me release a pack of savage mini wolves into my ears to claw away at my cochlea. However, it does get a tad bit grating listening to the same "pew pew" effect over and over and over again. Some background music wouldn't have gone amiss, that's for damn sure.
So yeah. Rock Station is a fun game, and I definitely prefer it to the other space shooters on this list, if for no other reason than it's much more satisfying to blow up your fellow man in a universe you understand than it is to blow up a faceless, nameless battle cruiser with no sense of context whatsoever. However, it's not without its flaws, and I can't recommend it to everyone. Perhaps I've become too hard to impress. After all, I was brought up on Starfox 64, and I've never had dogfights quite as fun or satisfying as the ones to be had therein.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep on rockin
Links
But there's no sound in space: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=513
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Robox
"Hey I got an idea."
"Yeah?"
"Why don't we make Mike Tyson's Punch Out but with robots?"
"Great idea! Nobody's ever done that before"
"I know, right? Hey, wanna play Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots?"
"Boy, do I!"
/snark
So yeah, Robox is a simple boxing game wherein you can choose one of 3 robots: the strong one, the fast one or the all-rounder. Much like in Punch-Out, you're locked in place and your only movement controls are a quick left dodge and a quick right dodge. Other than that, you're armed with only punches and a block.
While slightly restrictive, this setup can provide for buckets of fun, and Punch-Out wasn't the only game to prove that. Even the Punch-Out ripoffs like Rage of the Gladiator are pretty enjoyable, but what those games had that Robox doesn't is good game feel. This came from the stylized graphics (to Robox's ugly, boxy 3D art), satisfying sound effects (to Robox's screechy grunts that makes me want to clean my ears with battery acid) and hit sparks (to Robox's 0 feedback).
Let it never be said, however, that I am a gamer to be swayed by aesthetics alone. I'm the guy who actually finishes his replays of Deus Ex because what I really care about is the game design, not the visual design. So once you get past the god awful sound your robot makes when he punches, is Robox still fun to play? Well...kinda. 1/4 of the time.
Before every fight, there's a little text introduction to the robot you're about to spar with. In that introduction, the game tells you *exactly* how to beat that robot. See, Punch-Out was more than willing to stick a band-aid on King Hippo's belly and let you figure it out from there, but Robox thinks you're never going to figure out the incredibly complex strategy of "dodge the punches and hit the mean man."
Each robot only has 1 attack move that he sticks to rather religiously. Come on, the NES game had more variety than that, and that was on the NES! The only fight worth having is the one against BossBot, who employs all three strategies that you've faced before (see, it's good conveyance, blahblahblah NO IT'S NOT). I would totally play this game more if I could go straight to BossBot, but the fact that I have to sit through the other 3 pitiful fights first makes the slightly satisfying reward of the final fight much less satisfying.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep your guard up.
Links
Box, ro: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1652
"Yeah?"
"Why don't we make Mike Tyson's Punch Out but with robots?"
"Great idea! Nobody's ever done that before"
"I know, right? Hey, wanna play Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots?"
"Boy, do I!"
/snark
So yeah, Robox is a simple boxing game wherein you can choose one of 3 robots: the strong one, the fast one or the all-rounder. Much like in Punch-Out, you're locked in place and your only movement controls are a quick left dodge and a quick right dodge. Other than that, you're armed with only punches and a block.
While slightly restrictive, this setup can provide for buckets of fun, and Punch-Out wasn't the only game to prove that. Even the Punch-Out ripoffs like Rage of the Gladiator are pretty enjoyable, but what those games had that Robox doesn't is good game feel. This came from the stylized graphics (to Robox's ugly, boxy 3D art), satisfying sound effects (to Robox's screechy grunts that makes me want to clean my ears with battery acid) and hit sparks (to Robox's 0 feedback).
Let it never be said, however, that I am a gamer to be swayed by aesthetics alone. I'm the guy who actually finishes his replays of Deus Ex because what I really care about is the game design, not the visual design. So once you get past the god awful sound your robot makes when he punches, is Robox still fun to play? Well...kinda. 1/4 of the time.
Before every fight, there's a little text introduction to the robot you're about to spar with. In that introduction, the game tells you *exactly* how to beat that robot. See, Punch-Out was more than willing to stick a band-aid on King Hippo's belly and let you figure it out from there, but Robox thinks you're never going to figure out the incredibly complex strategy of "dodge the punches and hit the mean man."
Each robot only has 1 attack move that he sticks to rather religiously. Come on, the NES game had more variety than that, and that was on the NES! The only fight worth having is the one against BossBot, who employs all three strategies that you've faced before (see, it's good conveyance, blahblahblah NO IT'S NOT). I would totally play this game more if I could go straight to BossBot, but the fact that I have to sit through the other 3 pitiful fights first makes the slightly satisfying reward of the final fight much less satisfying.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, keep your guard up.
Links
Box, ro: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1652
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