When you think about it, it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a real and honest brawler. Amongst the vast number of fast-paced hack-and-slash games and character action titles, it’s hard to think of any grounded games where you just repeatedly punch people. Especially when it came to the 80’s/90’s arcade games centered around your favorite fictional characters. Thankfully, Kiborg is here to fill that niche while also being rogue-like because that’s what’s cool these days. Kiborg is a 3D beat-em-up rogue-like with a rather simple idea: Kill everything that turns up. Plot, menus, presentation, conversation, and anything else that could come between you and caving someone’s head in is not important.
Kiborg’s demo offers access to four missions—a few battles across several arenas. Apart from a few fundamental combinations, the player can pick up many weapons with their own movement sets. Though the game employs the same cinematic technique every time you kill one of the basic grunt foes, their staggered and solid feel when getting struck makes them the most satisfying portion of the game. Sadly, as soon as you advance to more formidable foes, which hardly respond to being struck, battles become less enjoyable than they already are. Not helping with a good initial impression are your lack of movements and tendency to be ganged up on.
One of the most appealing ideas in Kiborg is that robotic parts can bring enhancements to the limbs of your character as perks. Though it’s great that every update transforms him more and more like a robot, the default main character is a basic bald guy looking to kick ass and take no prisoners. The robotic changes nicely show how far you have run, and the sturdy designs for the robot components are pleasing. Apart from the few leg ones that alter your dodge into other actions, your robotic appendages often don’t provide you an instantaneous gameplay modification.
Itemization just feels like getting more health or a specific damage effect when doing certain combos. It’s not one of the worst rogue-like itemization systems out there, but it’s also not interesting at all. One feature I hope receives some extra love down the road is the finishers. The only one a player can currently spam is ripping the hearts out of chests. I hope Sobaka Studios has more moves in their wheelhouse, as it would be great to see various moves that are altered by the environments and/or the types of enemies they are being used on.
Kiborg’s current demo is somewhat brief and concludes with a fight against a cyborg boss equipped with enormous metal arms. Given the boss is more responsive and active than other foes in the game, the boss battle is likely the highlight of the demo in my opinion. Realizing that Kiborg isn’t precisely as entertaining as a rogue-like came from reaching the end of the demo and not wanting to play again. Almost every run seems identical, and even if one may pick many robotic improvements, the game does not make them distinct enough to encourage attempting alternative designs.
Kiborg has its moments but feels straight out of the indie library in the early days of development. It’s not particularly exciting or interesting, and it doesn’t feel any different from shovel-ware that came out 10 years ago. The game’s animations may look nice, and the robotic upgrade system is cool on paper, but there’s not much else going on, to where even writing this short preview has become an endeavor. There’s simply not much to talk about when it comes to this game.
Sobaka Studio’s other brawler, Redeemer, seems to have been received much better, so there’s a chance they could still turn Kiborg around and make some quality-of-life updates before the full release. Kiborg is set to release at some point on all current/last-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and Steam. Enjoy what is currently available and look forward to a potentially great beat-em-up set in everyone’s new favorite setting.
