Spyborgs

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Bionic Games
Genre: 2.5D side Scrolling Beat'Em Up
Platform: Wii
ERSB Rating: T for Teen
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Premise:
The premise of the game is to assume one of the three roles of a cyber soldier. The goal is to prevent the evil villain, Jackal, plans for world domination

Characters:
Within Spyborgs, there are three different characters the player can control and team up with in combat. The characters are: Clandestine, Bouncer, and Stinger. Each Spyborg has their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Clandestine is a speedy and agile ninja, Bouncer is a slow, lumbering tank and Stinger is the average soldier but armed gun projectiles.

Play:
The games pacing is very hard. Right from the start of the game, even on the normal or easy setting, this game is challenging. The 2.5D environment sends squads of enemies able to inflict high damage towards the player. The player must defeat them before moving onto the next level within the environment. There are no puzzles within the game, just fighting. The controls for the game feel great, because there are two settings to choose from: buttons, or motion controls. The buttons are simple, A button is the weak attack, B button for strong attack, C button to jump, Z button to block, and Z+A to initiate a special attack. The motion controls moving the button mashing to wii waggling.

Engagement:
The game would be more engaging but for some serious flaws. The story is reminiscent of an action packed Saturday morning cartoons. Although, the cut scenes had a great detail of polish(that is very uncommon for a wii game), the dialogue is corny and cheap, causing the "wow, that was incredibly stupid moments". The gameplay is basic and simple which makes it monotonous and repetitive, forcing the players to hit the same buttons over and over, performing the same actions.

Story:
The story behind Spyborgs can be fun at times or it can be the most generic and completely unoriginal thing ever played. The story starts out with the team leader named Stinger who wakes up from a coma caused by his last mission. His other team members, Clandestine and Bouncer were waiting for him to recover so that they can tell him what happened on the last mission. As they are briefing him, the base is attacked. The Spyborgs team up and battle the attacking enemy robots. After defeating the robots, the teams realizes that one of their own, Jackal, has gone rogue. The Spyborgs set out on a mission to stop Jackals plans for world domination..

Behaviors:
The characters behavior in the game are created by the game designers and are not influenced by the player. Behaviors include: walking, running, shooting and, melee attacks. Since there is such a range of behaviors available, the progression of the game should be much less predictable in its outcome and gameplay. But due to the linear gameplay, and 2 button combo system, the repetitive behaviors bring the game down and make it generic.

Resources:
The resources within the game are extremely manageable. The player has to watch their health bar, and their team combo bar. In order for players to restore their health bar, they need to find red orbs. To find red orbs, the player can kill enemies using a special combo or destroy the plethora of crates within the level. The same thing applies to finding the yellow special orbs, which allows you to uses a team combo.

Challenge:
The challenge in this game varies because there are 6 difficulty modes to play on: very easy, easy, normal, hard, hardcore, Spyborg Extreme. On the easiest setting, despite the restricted combat system detailed above, this game can be challenging . The challenge arises from having to use the limited tools to achieve a winning outcome. However, the game does allow you to bring a computer controlled ally of your choice and this does make a little easier. But, the player will need to save the computer instead of fighting his own enemies so it a limited assist. The enemies do massive amounts of damage to the player, so blocking is a necessity to make it through the game. Also, the option of choosing what character you want to play can change the challenge for the game. If the player chooses Bouncer, the player can easily defeat enemies and take the most damage. However, if the player is not careful, and just mindlessly mashes buttons, and does not block, they will die very quickly. When a player dies, he has to start at the very beginning of the level, having to re-fight the same enemies. This lack of check points means any mistakes make for a steep penalty: restart from the beginning.