SNK’s motto was “The future is now!”
Robo Army’s motto should be “The apocalypse is now!”
Overview
An early game that debut when the Neo Geo system was in its baby years, Robo Army was a game that was to feed off and follow the success of games like Double Dragon, Final Fight, and Streets of Rage, which explains why its set up is the same conditions of game play.
Set in a futuristic city of Neo-Detroit, Robo Army’s main storyline is about an evil scientist named Dr. Jeed, who wants to take over the world. He devises several plans in order for his conquest to be met. Among them is him building and manufacturing his own homemade army of deadly robots. He is also taking human hostages and stealing their brains to create more of his walking metallic minions, including his own daughter. Where there is an evil being, wanting to takeover the world, you can damn well bet the good guys are standing by, waiting to counter it.
Enter Rocky and Maxima, two special agents installed with the same robot equipment sent by the US to oppose the threat. How will Robo Army rate when this review is finish? A tough piece of metal or scrapes that needs to go into the recycling bin?
Graphics 5/10
For a game made in the early 90s, it’s actually decent in design in those years. The stages aren’t that bad, surrounding the game with areas in the jungle, broken roads, and long hallways in buildings.
The main robot enemies can be described as generic…and I mean it when I say it. They are all of the same design with one exception: depending on what color their wearing, they possess an assigned list of attack patterns. The aftermath of robot explosions look awesome the first seven times, but in mere seconds you kind of wish it stop doing it altogether. The only other baddies are machines with no lower body (looking like a reject from that “Terminator 2” movie), robots who act like spiders (which I think are groovy), and flying little beasts. I do ponder as to why Dr. Jeed’s daughter, in the end of the last stage, had blond hair, but was in a darker hair color when the animated sketches were shown for the game’s ending.
All the bosses, were just funny to see in action, but they serve there purpose. Their traits and styles are so left field. A mechanical gorilla, a car monster that like to chew things, and a some machine that looked like a giant mouser rip-off from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series, help conclude not only can the Dr. Jeed make different color basketball attire for basic robots, but lack inspiration and had to reach into other people’s work for his creations.
Gameplay/Controls 5/10
To be blunt, this game has its annoying and simple points. For the annoyance, the computer can be too smart for its own good. Sometime pestering you to punch their lights out, but when you do, they usually back up instead. Before you know it, you’re already dead, which leads me to the life meter. Thanks to SNK, I can die in fewer hits then what other side scrolling games would had let me withstand. What’s simple is that the stages are too short. From that, the bosses maybe hard hitting brawlers, but in not what seems like less then 20 seconds, the bosses are put out of their misery. I thought end bosses were to be more durable then that
The directional movements seem alright except when it came to climb on the vertical ropes. When moving around on a single rope, pressing left made me go right and vice versa. It was very unsettling. For the button layout: A was the attack button, B is your jump, and C is your special force move. Lots of bad facts can be said about the first two buttons. The attack action will feel extremely shorter in range then you thought, I got mad when the AI robots could punch me with ease, but when its my turn, it like the player is too much of a coward to extend his arm for better reach. It was like he was afraid of breaking a nail or afraid that, I don’t know…he might hit them? The slicing in half grab is a fun addition that I enjoyed, but you won’t get to use it as you want, thanks to the fast sprinting of the bad guys.
The jump button is only going to be needed for two things. Jump up straight to grab a power-up or jump in between the ropes levels. I say that because jumping around in this game is so awkward like you can’t believe. Doing jumping attacks are so quirky and blah, that if you’re lucky, you might get a rare chance of hitting something. Forget going over the landmines, just walk into them, they yield the same results.
The third one is very valuable for you to go forth in the game. Injected into that button are two cool moves. The true use of it is unleashing a powerful move that can destroy anything in one shot. The meter is made up six balls and goes in this order: two full screen, two projectiles, and two, no range blasters. After they are all empty, it becomes another powerful attack button that is better suited to play with then the original.
In all serious, I founded the overall items and weapons to be creative. Picking and throwing up heavy things like cars and barrel toward the robots have its perks. Clubbing over enemies with a defeated robot’s arm is funny to look at. Course, they’ll be power-ups that will regain your lost health or special meter. One unique power will transform you half human-half robot body into the next best thing…for a limited time, you get to be a large tank that can’t be hurt and you get to mow over anything in its way with ease. The ultimate drive by that is quite fun.
Sound/Music 3/10
Hitting the metallic machines does have a great clink and clang about them and do really booming explosions of scattered sheets of metal does an average job. The voice acting is dreadful (yes, even the robot dogs sounded terrible) and didn’t need to be their just to announce what power ups you got. You could plainly see it on the screen what you picked up, why need to verbally inform them that they got it? The human’s voice did sound like a robot…if it was speaking close to a recording microphone with cotton balls in its mouth.
Music-wise, the only track I seem fond of was the first stage, considering I heard some voice sampling that would be featured in the several songs in some of the KOF series, like the intro to “The King of Fighters’ 95”. For the rest of the music tracks, I played several more times to seem if any of them would stick in my brain. Many moments later, I still had nothing. The only other track that got me was the final boss’ theme.
Replay Value 2/10
The time length in beating this game is wicked fast. Battling in some stages will take not longer then going to the bathroom to urinate. To be critical, the only reason it receives a two out of ten is because the two player mode.
You and your friends will enjoy probably Robo Army maybe two times until it is place somewhere that we will officially forget in a day. So if you have about a half an hour to forty-five minutes to kill, now a good time as any to play it. You wouldn’t come back for a second helping, though,
Overall 3/10
If a repetitive came inside a game, it would be called Robo Army. If you push away all the small nifty attributes from it, the overall score would be dead on at one. Unless, you want to have every Neo Geo game in your collection, don’t think about buying or renting this game at all cost.
It just a game you will play a couple of times, then walk away from. Not lasting long enough to be in your short term memory bank. Whatever the future is, let’s pray it doesn’t become bleak as Robo Army.
- By Mr. Boombada
