MicroBot tells a tale of good robots gone bad. Microscopic robots have been created to aid the sick, but something has gone wrong and they're infecting cells and taking over. To investigate the situation, you control a revised MicroBot devised to not turn evil. After being injected into the patient's blood stream you'll travel throughout the body and destroy lots of evil MicroBots. That's the entire story, so I hope you weren't expecting more.
The game's greatest asset – its illusion of fluidity -- is unfortunately also its greatest weakness. In a twin-stick shooter you want your ship to be responsive and turn on a dime to avoid enemy fire, but that doesn't happen in MicroBot. Instead, you'll find yourself fighting against the current of bodily fluids while simultaneously taking on bunches of tiny, aggressive robots. Even once you get used to it there will be times you're slammed into a jagged wall or sucked into the metallic teeth of a boss robot all thanks to a sudden rush of fluid. It sucks when you don't feel like you have total control over the situation, but that's the way it goes in this environment.
The game's greatest asset – its illusion of fluidity -- is unfortunately also its greatest weakness. In a twin-stick shooter you want your ship to be responsive and turn on a dime to avoid enemy fire, but that doesn't happen in MicroBot. Instead, you'll find yourself fighting against the current of bodily fluids while simultaneously taking on bunches of tiny, aggressive robots. Even once you get used to it there will be times you're slammed into a jagged wall or sucked into the metallic teeth of a boss robot all thanks to a sudden rush of fluid. It sucks when you don't feel like you have total control over the situation, but that's the way it goes in this environment.
Unlike other twin-stick shooters that switch up gameplay via power-ups, MicroBot relies on upgrading your ship with new parts. Unlocked by collecting data that drops from enemies, you'll also need to gather atoms in the world to max out each part's effectiveness. There are several places to slot weapons, defense mechanisms, rudders, or "special" miscellaneous items like a harpoon on your ship. You start out as a puny 3-sided bot and eventually transform into a 7-sided force to be reckoned with. While I enjoyed the upgrade system in general, sometimes you can accidentally allocate atoms to a part that you didn't want upgrade and you can't undo your mistake. Also, you can only spend atoms to pimp out your bot or change its limbs in specific parts of the level, which is rather inconvenient.
Besides acting as a sort of currency, certain atoms also regenerate your health, so snagging them is pretty important. It's easy to get knocked out in this game, though that's more of a nuisance than an actual punishment as you have unlimited lives. Still, sometimes you'll find yourself getting respawned at a checkpoint amidst the same group of enemies that just killed you, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
A lot of the twin-stick shooters I've played have a gradual progression to the "Holy crap! There are so many enemies on the screen!" point, but MicroBot doesn't. You could be floating casually through a section with no enemies for quite a while and then all of a sudden a bunch of evil bots pop out of nowhere. It's either zero or a hundred in this game, there really wasn't much in between. There are white-blood cells peppered throughout the game that will aid you in your fight if you destroy bacteria or evil MicroBots, but if you attack them, they'll go after you. I liked this, as it sort of felt like you had a buddy, but it is easy to accidentally attack them when you're aiming for something else.
Bosses end each of the five story stages, and some of them are incredibly irritating, with the exception of the last boss who's a total pushover. A lot of the shots that take you down feel cheap, though it is satisfying to eventually turn the tables on them. All of them lack a health bar and only one of them physically showed damage, so it was often difficult to tell how much longer you needed to survive. Regrettably, the boss battles exacerbate the flaws of the game, as you quickly realize how you can't quite navigate the way you want or need to.
Time for an upgrade.
MicroBot isn't always about shooting stuff -- there's some light puzzling interspersed throughout the worlds, which can be a nice change of pace. The levels are fairly linear, but there are hidden collectibles called Bucky Balls as well as secret coves filled with atoms that you can miss out on.
If you don't like playing games alone, local co-op is an option. The ability to drop in and out of co-operative mode at any time is nice, but you're tethered together, so you can only get so far apart from each other. Also, if a friend wants to just play around for a bit in a higher level, they're stuck with an under-powered beginner's ship until they level up individually. I invited other people to come help me with the bosses, but they weren't able to do much with such a sad, little robot. It'd be nice if there were an option to give your friend a ship that had the same status as you did, maybe with the Achievements or Trophies disabled so someone who isn't that into gaming could pop in and play for a while.
Once you've finished the main campaign, there's still challenge mode. You have one life and can only assemble your perfect bot once, and then you run through levels that are structured like the main campaign until you eventually die. I was expecting the challenge mode to be more of an arena survival scenario, so I'm glad they took the less obvious approach.
