Spyborgs

Spyborgs, originally an off-the-wall, psychedelic action-adventure title, received such negative previews from the gaming establishment that, allegedly, the whole team went back to the drawing board. What developer Bionic Games ultimately released -- the Spyborgs we have now -- is a highly polished and competently designed effort, that is utterly devoid of originality or compelling gameplay elements of any kind. Spyborgs starts you off in medias res (the res being an invasion of Spyborgs' HQ by evil robots), and introduces you to its three primary characters, who are basically Brad Pitt from Johnny Suede with a gun strapped to his arm, Dog from Half-Life 2, and a chick who didn't quite make it into a ninja hentai anime. Sure, that's just what they look like, but still, a little imagination in character design could've helped -- and the lack thereof is typical of Spyborgs' by-the-numbers approach. Gameplay is equally staid: you choose one of the three characters (a buddy can choose another for co-op play) and run around linear maps beating the crap out of the aforementioned evil robots. Problem is, the waves of enemies are none too bright, falling victim to the same combos or specials over and over, and fighting them quickly becomes a rote exercise.

Resistance is futile. Button-mashing isn't...

Futile.

A little while back, we did a piece about games that changed during their development cycles, and we mentioned that sometimes games go through some pretty drastic changes from when we first see them to when we first play them. When we first saw Spyborgs at Captivate ’08, it seemed like a fun, irreverent parody of Saturday-morning cartoons and the superhero genre. ...

Spyborgs serves up competent two-player cooperative action on a nice-looking platter, but the dish is bland and unappetizing.