Robokill 2 review (iPad)

♫ “Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?”

Robokill 2: Leviathan Five, to give the game its full title

10 word description: Sequel. Dual-stick shooter. 12 missions, 600 rooms. In-App-Purchases.

10 word review: A copy of the first one, plus a few irritations.

You will like this if you enjoy: Robokill. Dual stick shooters.

The good news: Graphics and sound are generally good. Controls work well. Weapons and enemies are ok. Visual effects are varied and mostly impressive.

The bad news: Well, it’s virtually identical to the first one; the only significant change is a bad one – mission progress (i.e. cleared rooms) isn’t saved. If  you return to the menu or the game crashes, which happened to me a few times, you have to restart the current mission even if you had almost finished it. Your accumulated gear and cash, however, are retained. Now, call me cynical, but this appears to be directly linked to the in-app-purchases where you can buy cash and character levels. Oh, and there’s some slow-down on busy screens. Falling down holes is annoying when you didn’t even realise that there was a hole there.

Arcadelife verdict: It’s not an improvement on the original game. Apart from the ‘Aliens’ inspired enemies, which inexplicably start to feature laser toting generic bad guys within a few rooms, there’s hardly anything to identify it as a separate game. The doors look a bit different, but everything else looks the same, even the unnecessary screen border, the shop, and the level up notifications.

The shop screen is the same old mess, with no attempt at sorting a whole bunch of things that look the same. Instead, they added game-killing IAPs, so that's just great

Where the original Robokill showed you the whole map of each mission, this one employs a fog-of-war mentality, but it’s still the same old key-hunt and repetitive clearing of anonymous, randomly designed rooms. The IAPs are baffling – you can buy your way to level 17 without shooting a single alien. Well that’s just great; why not let us buy the congratulatory “Thanks for saving the universe” final cutscene or, better still, why not just go and watch someone else playing the game on YouTube? Pathetic. I honestly don’t care what the mathematically calculated final rating is for this, it’s getting a low mark for the total lack of inspiration and the sheep-like “must add IAPs” attitude.

Arcadelife rating

Visuals – 8.5/10
Audio – 8.5/10
Controls – 8.5/10
Content – 8.5/10
Fun – 7/10
Final rating – 50/100

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0

Wandake website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
iPad (OS 5.0.1)