RoboBlitz puts you in the role of a robot named Blitz, hurray for truth in
advertising. Anyway you’re minding your own business on your spaceship when all
of a sudden you come under attack by other robots who just happen to be space
pirates after your ship. Good thing your ship comes with a gigantic space cannon
that can send the bad guys into oblivion … now if only you had left it powered
on and fully loaded… Your task is thus to get that cannon back online and save
your ship.
Defending a ship under siege in a game built with the Unreal engine sounds
for all the world like it would be a shooter, but RoboBlitz is primarily a
puzzle game with elements of an action game thrown in. Your ship is divided into
a number of sections each dedicated to a subsystem of your super cannon … power,
ammunition, etc. Each of these subsections is divided into three levels that
you'll need to complete in succession in order to bring the subsystem back
online.
Bringing the systems online is where the puzzle aspect of the game comes into
play. The puzzles are all of the variety that will be familiar to players of
platform games. Boxes need to be moved to weigh down triggers, switches need to
be flipped, and you’ll need to jump between platforms of various kinds or avoid
being flattened by machinery. There’s nothing here that will have you racking
your brain in frustration, especially since the ship’s resident science bot is
always sending you communications letting you know what you need to do next.
Making your task a bit more of a challenge are the robots who’ve invaded your
ship. These come in a few varieties, from little ones who scurry about the
ground trying to simply run into you to flying models that launch missiles at
you. You’re not entirely defenseless, though. Blitz can switch his arm
attachments on the fly and begins the game with a pair of grabbing arms and a
pair with EMP rifles on the tips. The grabbing arms are pretty useless against
enemies; they’re really there for manipulating and moving objects while solving
the game’s puzzles. The EMP rifles can temporarily disable enemies but not take
them out. If you’re lucky then the enemy is close to a ledge, shredder, or some
other danger and you can give them a nudge to their death. As you make your way
through the game’s levels you’ll find objects known as upgradium which you can
collect to buy upgrades between levels. Some of these upgrades are new arm
extensions that pack more of an offensive punch and allow you to permanently
take out those pesky enemy robots.
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