12-Feb-2007 Batteries not included. Or needed You can tell a game's onto something when even mumbling its one-line high concept makes you smile. Are you ready? Mr Robot! is... Head Over Heels meets Final Fantasy with the plot of System Shock. But cute.
You have two choices: grinning, or being a terminal misanthrope. Don't resist the light.
You play Asimov, a humble serving robot aboard the spaceship Eidolon, where everything is going wrong a la System Shock: robot rebellions, crew hypersleep death, uppity artificial intelligences. Only, you're in an old school isometric 3D world, just like your sainted mother used to make back in the 1980s. Puzzles - challenging your mental and physical faculties, and occasionally even both - hamper your progress. And they're expertly, lovingly designed. The jump from feeling confounded by these puzzles to the elation of hitting a solution is as fine as in any of the games that have inspired them. And when those games are as fine as Ritman's Head Over Heels and Ultimate's Knightlore, that's really saying something.
When you reach a problem that would have been solved by hacking in the Shock games - opening a bulkhead, perhaps - the game reveals that it's also a turn-based strategy game. To simulate your progress through the computer, you click through a simple map of the system's various components. When the electronic countermeasures try to stop you, you enter a Japanese-RPG-style fight where each of your 'Ghosts' gets to choose its attacks. As you progress, you're able to collect treasure, upgrade and all the other genre staples. Then it's back into the isometric world for more platforming fun.
That two completely opposed game types have merged into one absolutely coherent game is a minor miracle. It should be chalk and cheese, but turns into something more akin to delicious sweet and sour. Exactly how it holds together is something of a mystery, but the game's well conceived and coherent cartoon world is surely a large part of it. The real miracle isn't that it works at all - but that it works so well.
Most of the game's problems are inherent in the genres Mr Robot! makes use of. The isometric view can lead to occasions where your sprite is obscured behind scenery. While a little transparency means you don't get lost, there are times when it's going to cause frustration. Over on the turn-based battle side, the action can get a little repetitive. The difficulty level may also be pitched a notch too low - but when the alternative means reaching a room and all progress stopping dead for hours, you could just as easily argue that this is a positive step. There's a bit too much back-and-forth across the ship as you get further into the game. And finally, the mouse control is so inaccurate it shouldn't even be included in case someone might actually try to play with it.
In other words, no problems that stop Mr Robot! being the most enjoyable independent game I've played since Defcon. Funny, challenging and cute, in the old school it's absolutely top of its class.
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