Publisher: Steam
Developer: Naked Sky Entertainment
Genre: Third-person puzzle/action
Number of Players: 1
Available On: PC, Xbox 360
Rating: E10+
Roboblitz Gallery
Test system
Athlon 64 3000+
2GB RAM
GeForce 6600 128MB

Story

The game follows a robot caretaker named Blitz who maintains an orbital space cannon. All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, robot space pirates attack. While robot space pirates add a fresh factor to a worn-out story, in the end it’s just that: a worn-out story. While it’s not particularly uncommon to find a game with a poor plot, it certainly seems to be a deliberate move and there is almost zero plot development as the game progresses. The characters characters are provided with no depth and no endearing qualities by the developers. Of the two characters in the game, Blitz is the silent type, whilst the other, the station’s engineer Karl, is of the oafish, chatty type. In case you were wondering: yes, the characters remain this one-dimensional throughout the game. A testament to how bad this actually is is that I literally had to start a new game to find out the engineer’s name; there is not even the slightest attempt to create an emotional tie to the characters aside from the ‘humor’ in the game’s dialogue. I use the term humor very loosely as it’s of the cutesy type, leading to such lines as “Those things are mean!” which, in my opinion, are more annoying than funny. Granted, you’re more likely to buy the new Sam’n’Max game if it’s humor you want, but this really is rubbish.

Graphics

For many the draw of RoboBlitz is the promise of a first glimpse of Epic’s new engine, and the draw of Unreal 3 is that it’s pretty, really pretty. And in that respect RoboBlitz delivers. Sure, it’s definitely not as good looking as, for example, Rainbow Six Vegas, but it looks pretty good. Most of this is down to the lighting and its effects on the environment as well as the ever popular glowing effect. One item in the game that demonstrates its prowess perfectly is the firework launcher: it homes in on enemies and, after lifting them skywards, explodes in a dazzling array of colors. The design of the enemies in the game is also spot on, providing the game with a cast of contrasting metal and brilliant, glowing colors. It really is impressive. Less impressive, however, is the lack of originality in the environment design or the level of effort that went into integrating the environments with the tone of the game. Whilst on one hand you have characters that attempt to be cute, on the other you’ve got cold, metallic levels. What’s even worse is that the look of the levels is just so generic it’s painful. To me it seems that the developers managed to pull off some nice features with the incredible power of the engine but just didn’t give any thought to making anything different, graphics-wise.