Sunday, June 11, 2017

Battlebots GameBoy Advance Review

I'm going to be reviewing Battlebots for the Gameboy advance. The game obviously is based off of the Battlebots TV series in which people create robots and fight them. This game had a bit of controvesry on it's release in 2002, Wikipedia has it all so I'll let it explain it to you. "BattleBots: Design & Destroy was released on December 10, 2002 for the Game Boy Advance. It was stated that the game was the sequel to BattleBots: Beyond the BattleBox; but it actually is the same game released under a different name, albeit with some bugs fixed. It was possible that the game was released to pick up sales from gamers mistaking it for the PC game Robot Arena 2: Design & Destroy."

 So, yeah the game is a total scam, but it still might be fun. There are definitely problems with this game, including the fact that it only has a select number of bots to choose from in brawl mode which is the most fun, but they split them up into classes and you're basically going to lose if you you don't pick the one good one in the class which makes it overpowered. Another problem I came across was it being very hard and dying after one hit, but that was due to my game being in simulation mode instead of arcade. In tournament mod, which is basically the career mode you can make your own bot and fight, that mode is ok. 

The only other mode is wired multiplayer mode, which due to my lack of a GBA connection cord I didn't play. The graphics in this game are a huge problem, they are very blurry and hard to make out what it is you are battling with. The actual controls are a bit hard to figure out and you can't zoom in or out to see the whole arena other than seeing your opponents bot. The AI isn't good and won't even attack you if you are too far away or in a corner or something. I played this game expecting an ok Battlebots experience after watching the new ABC reboot show, with awesome stuff, such as smashing drones with rakes, I was heavily let down by this game. If I ever play this again it would be maybe one quick brawl match if I'm bored. I would rate this game as a whole a 3/10.

 All of this said, Battlebots does have potential in video games as shown by this footage for this canceled PS2 and Gamecube game, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Hqnuo6u3s
And with the new reboot I would really like to see a great Battlebots game, but this isn't it.

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