STEVE MILES·THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
Worth a hook up or a pain in the bot?
Hookbots arrives on Switch, and boasting 4 player multiplayer and solo mode options, can this compete with its nemesis Super Smash Brothers?
For starters and for this review, the single player solo mode is used, as the only 4 people to come around my house are either children wanting their ball back or Jehovahs Witnesses!
Luckily there are decent modes on offer here.. Campaign, Challenges and Training, and the campaign mode is pretty much the bread and butter as progress through the various types of robot battles, can grant and unlock new robots, areas, modes etc. Characters on the off are limited, but have their own personality and abilities and pleasingly varied from each other. As you progress through the campaign, you will encounter 1 to 1 battles, 1 vs numerous bots, boss fights , and my personal favourite.. sports arena, where you play various robot opponents over a game of soccer or volleyball.
The campaign itself is pretty long and contains plenty for the player to enjoy and work through.Graphically everything is well rendered and the gameplay smooth without any slowdown encountered in my gameplay for this review. Battle screens can be colourful and varied and unlike Super Smash Bros, there is no death from falling off screen into oblivion! Controls are the standard jump, punch/use weapon, but the most used you will find, is the hookshot,granting an attack when directing at opponents or hooking onto higher ledges and breaking open random boxes for weapons and abilities.
Hookbots plays very similar to Super Smash Brothers, which is why I keep referring to it in this review.There is a 4 player multiplayer option of course, and should you get 4 friends around your Switch one night, there is plenty of fun to have from this game. Although there is also a hefty solo campaign and challenges for the single player,the action still feels a bit empty and barren for most parts, meaning things are a bit lacking.
In summary, there is a half price game here and get well into the game and this sadly shows itself, when you’re really trying very hard not to notice it.Competing with Super Smash Bros and without an Online Multiplayer mode to boot, it has a long way to catch up, unless developers fix this and add the mode in a future update,and so the verdict?
OK but sadly lagging behind other similar games..
Thanks to Tree Interactive for the code.
