“Spyborgs” is a game I doubt has been on many peoples’ radars. At the tail end of Q3, most people are more concerned with highly anticipated titles like “Batman: Arkham Asylum”, “The Beatles Rockband“, and “Halo: ODST”. Spyborgs may not be “Game of the Year” material, but I’m here to tell you that this game just might be worth diverting some of your attention to, especially if your looking for a good game to play “couch co-op”.

I won’t get too into the game’s story because, much like the title, it is pretty cheesy and silly. Basically, “The Spyborg Initiative” takes soldiers who have been heavily injured and gives them cybernetic implants instead of discharging them. When Spyborg operatives start to disappear, it’s up to Stinger: a big dude with a Gatling gun for an arm, Clandestine: a ninja girl, and Bouncer: a giant robot who technically I’m not sure if I can consider a Spyborg by definition (what with him being a robot and all) to save the day.

The gameplay in Spyborgs is reminiscent of classic brawlers like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, but with a much more modern take in both graphics and gameplay. There’s even an elevator level which I can only assume is an homage to the genre’s past.

Combat in Spyborgs is relatively simple. Each character has a weak attack and a strong attack with jumping versions of each. You can string the two types together to form a few different combos. As you progress, you will gain other abilities such as dodge rolling, dash attacks, and extra hits lengthening your combo.

One of the most important buttons in Spyborgs, however, is the block button. Even on the “Core” (read: Normal) setting, ignoring this button will result in your untimely death. Spyborgs is a much more challenging game than I expected it to be. But much like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, you can switch between one of five available difficulty settings at any time from the pause menu. This feature is great as it allows you to adjust your settings on the fly if the game get’s too boringly easy or too frustratingly hard.

Though all your normal actions are mapped to buttons, there are a few motion controls thrown in. Throughout every stage, certain objects (and later enemies) are invisible. To reveal them, you must use “Spy Vision”. Pointing at an object with “the predator effect“, tapping “A”, and flicking the wiimote upward will reveal anything that’s cloaked. The presence of cloaked objects adds an extra need for good observation skills and is especially well used when trying to find the optional “secret tapes” scattered throughout most of the game’s levels.

The most commonly hidden items are supply crates. These can contain blue, green, orange, or red “sparks”. Blue sparks recharge your health while green sparks give you temporary invincibility. Orange sparks fill up your “Power Gauge”. Once one of the active characters (two characters are in play at all times regardless of whether there is a second human player) fills their gauge, they can perform a “combo finisher”.

Combo finishers target a single enemy. The screen will go blue and there will be two motion-based quick-time events (one for each character). Thankfully, the QTEs are extremely lenient and failed very few times in my playthrough. Besides easily defeating enemies, combo finishers will award you large quantities of sparks. The color of sparks you get will be determined by the enemy type. This makes for some interesting strategies, since saving your combo finisher for an enemy that will grant you blue sparks (health) could mean life or death.

Finally, we have red sparks. Red sparks are currency. At the end of each stage, red sparks can be spent to upgrade your characters. The upgrade categories are Health, Damage, Moves, and Special (the rate the power gauge fills). Each of these categories has five levels of upgrading. One of the nice touches I enjoyed is that each of these upgrades will actually alter the appearance of your character. Stinger, for example, looks more and more like a Transformer combined with something from Tron as you upgrade him.

One of the best ways to get sparks is by racking up large combos. Never letting too long of a break happen between your hits is key. You can even destroy select pieces of the environment to continue your combo on your way to the next enemy. Amassing red sparks and upgrading my character always gave me an additional thing to look forward to at the end of each stage.

There are five chapters total. Each one is broken up into bite-sized stages that can be comfortably played in short or long sessions. In fact, you can start the game from any previously completed stage as well as have a second player hop in or out of the game at any time. If one player dies, they can be resurrected (though with little health) if the remaining player can manage to beat the enemies remaining in that particular wave.

I was impressed with Spyborg’s graphics. Everything in the game is very stylized. The cartoony look combined with the bloom lighting (though a bit overused at times) makes it one of the better looking games on the system. This is assisted by very smooth animation. With the exception of one stage near the end of the game, there were virtually no sections of slowdown or frame-rate drops at all. Though I wasn’t a huge fan of the designs of the main characters, I enjoyed the enemies quite a bit. My personal favorite was a robot in a business suit with a giant claw arm.

Though it only took Jonah and I approximately six hours to complete our first playthrough of Spyborgs, there are still secret tapes to be found, harder difficulties to play on, and medals to get. Medals are setup identically to achievements (x360) or trophies (ps3), though without a gamercard to attach them to. Of course, we only have Nintendo to blame for that. Luckily, Capcom provides incentives to earn medals in the form of extras such as concept art, cheats, and videos (some of which show what the game looked like before the massive overhaul).

If you have a buddy to play local co-op with (sorry, no online!), Spyborgs is a solid title at a bargain price of $39.99. Capcom’s modern take on the dated genre made for one the most enjoyable times I’ve had with a brawler. The ability to play in short sessions makes it a great game to have on-hand when you’re just itching for some simple, but fun co-op action.

This review is based a copy of Spyborgs provided to us by Capcom.

Tags: bionic games, brawler, capcom, co-op, spyborgs, Wii

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.