Spyborgs reminded me a lot of classic SNES brawlers such as Battletoads and Double Dragon when I tried the game out at Capcom’s E3 booth. Everything is in 3D but you’ll always be moving on a 2D plain either horizontally or vertically depending on the level.
Spyborgs supports two player co-op on the Wii and I played the game with Dale Hoofin’ North. The first level we played on was a train stage and we had to fight some baddies on top of the moving train. I was playing as the ninja girl while Dale was the gorilla robot. More often than not, I would lose myself due to all the carnage taking place on the screen. The same thing would happen to Dale when he became the ninja girl and I picked the gorilla robot. It’s easy to keep track of the gorilla robot as it’s huge but the girl just kept blending in with enemies.
More after the break.
The next level was in a jungle setting and this stage would switch between the vertical and horizontal pathways. I was the gorilla robot again and Dale picked the third available character who was like Barrett from Final Fantasy 7 in that he had a machine gun hand.
After beating up so many enemies, your characters super meter will fill up. When one person’s super meter is filled up, both players can perform a team attack. To perform a team attack, the person that first activates it has to move their Wiimote and Nunchuk in different directions based on the on screen prompts. The partner then has to follow up by following the next on screen prompts. The move usually brings about a lot of damage and I liked how it encourages teamwork. It’s hard trying to figure out who is supposed to swing the Wiimote and Nunchuk as the game doesn’t do anything special to point out which player needs to perform the action. Dale and I ended up performing the Wiimote actions at the same time with each prompt just to be on the safe side.
The last level we played on saw us taking on a gigantic robot boss. The levels weren’t really fun but I had a blast taking on the big ass boss. The boss had several different types of attacks and was your typical old school boss battle where the boss would attack, stand still, then let you beat up on him. It kind of reminded me of Henry Hatsworth’s final boss, just nowhere near as awesome.
The levels really didn’t wow me, but that boss fight really makes me want to play Spyborgs again IF all the boss fights are on the same level. Otherwise, I can’t see myself getting all that into Spyborgs especially since you have to swing the Wiimotes around to perform some of the moves. What can I say? I’m lazy when I play games and I don’t think moving my arms around like a crazy spider monkey is fun.
