By Kieron Gillen on October 1st, 2007 at 11:45 pm.
I was bouncing mails with Moonpod, arranging an interview about what they’ve been up to and specifically their latest game, when I realised that a lot of people may not even be aware of Mr Robot. Let’s sort THAT out.
When I reviewed Mr Robot for PCG back in February, I described it as “Head Over Heels meets Final Fantasy with the plot of System Shock. But cute.” before going on to say it was “the most enjoyable independent game I’ve played since Defcon”. Which now, seven months on, still sounds about right. It’s an isometric adventure game mashed with an Eastern Style RPG, basically, and feels a lot like a modern version of those character-lead, quietly perfect games which I cut my teeth on circa the Spectrum in the UK. I like it a lot and when you play the demo, you will too.
Just, for God’s sake, don’t use the mouse-controls. I mean it.
I’m tempted to give it a go, as StarScape was a great little game in many ways, but the writing made me cry. Have they got someone literate in to handle Mr. Robot, or have they used an alternative narrative method?
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I still need to play StarScape, so can’t actually compare. But I thought the narrative was cutely done.
KG
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I loved Alien 8, so naturally I had my fingers poised on my credit card throughout the demo, but then the turn based battles started.
Developers! Please, if you’ve already got cute isometric robot platforming in your game, you don’t need to add anything else.
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On that note, there is a remake of Head over Heels you can get here:
http://retrospec.sgn.net/games/hoh/
If you feel like some nostalgia. It’s still pretty good fun too, if frustrating in the extreme.
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I just played the demo, and really liked it, apart from the turn based hacking battles. If they’re going to dress up a turn-based RPG as a hacking game, I wish they’d disguise it a little more.
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@Shanucore: according to their forum they used a writer for Mr. Robot (they actually mention the problems with Starscape dialogue which is supposedly now fixed although I haven’t checked this myself)…
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