Xbox Addict:

RoboBlitz

How do you describe RoboBlitz™, Naked Sky Entertainment's new offering on Xbox Live® Arcade? It fits into a few categories that help to paint the picture: It's an action-driven platform game, yes, hearkening to classics like Jak and Daxter, or Ratchet and Clank. It's an Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title, so it's tight, compact, and easy to jump into and just play. It's also a shooter with lots of weapons, some standard, some unusual and very creative, reminiscent of the freeze-gun and shrink-ray in Duke Nukem 3D way back when, resulting in some unexpected, fun, and sometimes hilarious combat.

Use the laws of physics to your advantage.

The best way for me to describe Roboblitz would be like this: If you went into your typical fast food burger joint and dropped two bucks on the lunch special, and then you get your burger, but the burger tasted like a sirloin tip steak, just the way you like it, and it came with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, followed up by fresh apple cobbler topped with ice cream and chased with fresh-brewed coffee, and maybe even a fine Cuban cigar. For only two bucks, remember. What would you do? You'd probably want to tell all your friends about it. And that's what I'm doing here.

Roboblitz is a sci-fi action game played in third-person, built on the Unreal 3 engine, and it is heavily physics-driven, right down to the gameplay.

Your robotic in-game avatar might as well be wearing a bumper sticker that reads "force equals mass times speed," because everything within the game toes the line with Sir Isaac Newton. Weapons like the tractor beam will lash together objects within the game such as desks, cabinets, pieces of machinery, into masses of metal and machinery that can be used as platforms to traverse dangerous areas, barricades to deflect enemy fire, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Blitz opens fire.

Antigravity guns can be used to blast objects and suspend them in space: Removing obstacles, or suspending enemies within midair, making them into robotic piñatas for your target practice amusement. Since the game engine revolves around the real-world physics of Unreal 3 and not scripted animations or game mechanics, inventive players will be able to find solutions to game levels that even the designers themselves may not have thought of. The 19 levels of the space station you play through all contain the means to solve the puzzles, it's just up to your creativity to use all your tools and weapons with the clutter around you to get where you need to go.

The game's premise is a simple one: Blitz, your in-game character, is essentially a space janitor, a mechanic and caretaker on a largely abandoned space station housing a massive defense cannon, which has fallen into disuse and decay. When a robotic alien invasion force threatens, Blitz must repair, refurbish, and activate six core systems within the station to bring the cannon online and repel the invaders: Systems such as cooling, ammunition feed, and so forth. Each system has several sublevels, three or more, which much each be repaired, cleared, or solved to advance. As you progress through the levels, blasting invading robots and repairing the station's subsystems, you earn upgradium, a collectable currency that allows you to upgrade Blitz with more sophisticated weaponry, heavier armor, and the means to move faster and jump higher.

The game is simple to play. Controller mechanics are identical to any other third-person shooter, with a two-stick setup controlling movement and the camera that is instantly intuitive, the d-pad switches weapons, and, of course, there's the mandatory jump button. Completely HUD-less, the game simplifies things by showing two glowing bar graphs on Blitz's back, one representing his overall health (plus, when damaged he tends to spark and smoke). The other meter represents his available weapons power, which steadily recharges.

The adventure of a robot's life.

Repair power-ups are liberally scattered throughout the levels, though some are in places that will require some ingenuity to reach. The game truly shines in the graphics: It baffles, boggles, and quite simply astounds that these levels, textures, and lighting are hiding in a mere 50 megs of downloadable data. The game looks like a full-blown retail action offering for any current-gen platform, with the added caveat of running in full-on high def for us next-gen folks, meanwhile this whole game hides inside less data than you delete out of your junk-mail folder in the morning.

The game has a quirky flavor and style, from the cartoonish quality of the enemies, who are sort of gleefully evil, to the assistance of your robotic partner Karl who furnishes your upgrades ("I'd help you, but … well, I'm tied to the ceiling."). The music is fantastic, with an instantly identifiable theme for the hero and overall reminiscent of Alexander Brandon's score for Deus Ex. With rumors and rumblings of future downloadable content and perhaps even a multiplayer mode expansion, this is a solid game that would be just as home in an acid-green clamshell case on the shelf of your local game store as it is as an Xbox Live download.

Robotic destruction, puzzle-solving, and an environment where you can pick up, throw down, and slam everything (including the bad guys) around like your favorite action figure playset in the real world. Download it and find out just how much action can be crammed into 50 megabytes.

Article by Xbox Addict