BioMech

metroidvania che si fa piacevolmente giocare, consigliato

I almost hate to say that I enjoyed playing through this, but I really did. It's more of a Metroid clone than a Metroidvania, based on a comic and yet the game art is kinda terrible. Sometimes it looks like really good NES graphics and other times it looks like MS paint vomit. The music is surprisingly very good, and the game play ranges from super fun and intense to just plain unplayable. In the beginning you have basically no health and enemies will instakill the player over and over again. Much like in Metroid, you pick up mobility, weapons and health upgrades on the map by exploring. There aren't really a ton of secretly hidden things and if you access a device on the map you can see what items are remaining, making it even easier. Personally, I liked that because if I'm playing a janky Metroid clone I don't want to be puzzled on what to do next. Despite being based on a comic there's no dialogue and you're simply running through a base shooting down robots and progressing. Initially the combat seems impossible, but it makes more sense later on. You can duck down to shoot certain enemies and others have patterns that you can eventually figure out. The bosses also have somewhat of a puzzle element to them. The final boss in particular was a ton of fun to figure out because you kill him by leading his rockets back into him. There aren't really a lot of guns but there are several abilities like a ground pound and double jump, though they're all strictly for mobility. This tapped into the "completionist" part of my brain, as I had the most fun exploring the map and scouring it for every last health pickup and key item. There are obviously much better Metroid clones out there but this one was actually fun despite the bad quality of some of it, and the short little journey was worth the effort.

Esse jogo não é ruim, mas o fato dele bugar toda vez que eu morro é muito estranho esse lance de ter que voltar para tela inicial por que o jogo fica parado quando vc morre. Talvez possa ser um bug ou alguma coisa que eu deva apertar pra voltar, pois se for assim normalmente me desanima muito de jogar.

It is okay when it works. For me it glitched out completely to the point doing everything in the game was not enough to trigger any progress.

Biomech was another game that I picked up on a whim this month. It was part of a bundle. It sounded interesting and I like Metroidvanias. So how does it stack up? The TL:DR version: It's a D+ level product. The long version is that it has good ideas, just poorly implement. The story of Biomech is based upon the developer's webcomic of the same name. It is hidden online and you can read it if you wish. Regardless, a cyborg by the name Tatiana is sent to an abandoned facility to figure out what's going on there. Past that, there's no plot. Nothing to help you understand her or the history of the place. Gameplay, as noted, is very much a standard Metroidvania. It says on the box that backtracking isn't "a dirty word." It never ways. Tatiana fires out a gust of air (and later fire and then a stronger bolt) like Samus did in the original Metroid. The more powerful weapons have an ammo count, though I never ran out even with the most basic level. The developer seems to understand the concepts necessary / elements of what makes a good game in the genre. However, it frequently feels like they were checking off boxes: Power slide, an explosion (that's useless), a downward strike (that only destroys certain floors and is otherwise useless), a high jump that elevates her stand jump from a little under half the screen to a tad more than half the screen, a double jump, and 2 types of missiles. If that's all there was, I'd be semi-content. However, playing it is a hot mess. First of all, let's talk about the controls. In general, they're fine. They're fairly responsive. However, our hero only has 2 jumping heights: Less than full and then the full jump. There's no modulating it. This makes avoiding damage very difficult. It also makes navigating the game more challenging than it needs to be. The point of a powerup system like Metroid is that it should expand the moveset and make navigating easier. Until I got the double jump, there were moments that it made navigating harder. And as such, falling into instant death spikes was easy. Ascending up the map was harder due to her increased jump height. Complicating things further is the fact that bosses are damage sponges. Once you understand the pattern on how to avoid them, it became easy to defeat them. Also, enemies cause a disproportionate amount of damage to the health you have. The very first boss of the game fires out missiles that instantly kills the hero. Then there are 4 different enemies that fire the same missiles that knock the player out. It doesn't feel challenging in a good way; it feels unfair and unbalanced. And then there are the bugs. I've seen bats fly around at super sonic speed and maintain position on screen. I've seen bats and shots transition from 1 screen to the other. Pausing doesn't truly seem to stop things. Thus, it's possible to die from shots. And then there's the general bugginess. I've used the downward strike on enemies and it freezes Tatiana in position. And then I got her unfrozen by exploding which then zoomed her across the screen and the screen transition unfroze her. And then the final nail in the coffin is the final challenge: Defeat the boss in 3 minutes. Okay. Fine. I beat the boss and go through the teleporter. And then promptly die. So how am I supposed to beat the game? I can't decide if this is a glitch, a problem with my computer, or intentional. And that's not a good feeling for a player. Thus, playing it was difficult. I found myself playing it quick and short bursts as I worked my way through the game. For every design decision made, there was at least 1 thing I found frustrating. The overall lack of balance and the bugs quickly shortened gaming sessions. Graphically, the game is decent to look at. I saw a reviewer write that it reminds them of a DOS game. I think that's a fair assessment. It's nothing special to look at. Some of the shots are a little hard to see because it blends in with the background. The areas aren't super memorable. Sound design is decent. Very little is catchy to me. I do genuinely wonder why the damage taken sounds a ton like Mega Man. And I would rather listen to a Mega Man soundtrack. In conclusion, BioMech is not the worst game I've played this year. That goes to Time Knight Adventure (which is also by the same developer). TKA makes BioMech look refined and polished in comparison. It has the elements that make up a solid Metroidvannia yet it doesn't seem to understand how the upgraded tools are to support the player. Ultimately, the game design, controls, and bugs bring down what should be a standard C-tier game down a full level. It is not worth 10 dollars. There are better games to play at the same price point that fully reaches what it set out to do and doesn't cause all sorts of weird gameplay glitches. And it's such a shame too because the developer seems to have some talent too.