Demo Review 21: Robox

A robot gets dropped from space and reaches a planet's atmosphere, falling through a lot of suspended pieces of ground. Oh hey, it's Pandora! ...Not really. Besides, Pandora is a moon. Anyway, the little Robox pops itself out of the ground and you control him to walk right... except it breaks. You're treated to a mini-game in which you must select little critters within the robot, and then send these critters to accomplish some tasks. Each time you do that, the robot starts walking again. In fact, it seems to regain its abilities! The robot repairs itself thanks to you!

Soon the robot learns to jump. After venturing through a deserted wasteland (on which there are some machines, oddly enough), the robot meets a creature and learns to shoot a laser. Even later on, Robox finds out how to smash blocks by dropping all his weight on them.

However, as the level progresses, I felt it became needlessly difficult. I mean, this is the third part, and I've had to retry about twelve times! You want to know why? Because the flying enemies are too high for Robox to hit them, and when they do go down to attack him, they're still hard to destroy. As if that wasn't enough, they're also difficult to avoid, and like that wasn't enough, there's also a lot of zones with spikes on the ground. By the way, I tried killing a fly monster with a ground pound. It didn't work. I also got stuck near the end of the fourth part, where Robox on a rising platform had to avoid falling slugs. At the end, it gets crazy.

I despised playing this game. The concept is good, the music is alright, the controls are fine, the graphics are beautiful, and seriously if it weren't for the absurd difficulty level of this game I would have kept on playing. But I ragequit after I realized this game was way too hard for its own good, and many elements shoot it down. Another problem: Robox's movements are slow. I mean, when he's moving left or right, he cannot run, and as a result he is a pain in the ass to control. That also makes it VERY difficult to avoid obstacles, like the barrage of falling slugs.

I had a very displeasing experience. Seriously, I do not recommend this game. Try it if you want. Try the demo. But I can't tell if you'll like it. Maybe you're a better player than me. It's very possible. But I assure you that I didn't like Robox, and I will never buy the full game.