Give Up, Robot

[Play "Give Up, Robot".] Game Description: It will take determination to jump, grapple, and swing your way through Give Up, Robot’s 50 levels of brain-melting madness. | Your goal in each level is to reach the exit, where once again you are welcomed into another challenging room, whereas the narrator will once again taunt you and attempt to presuade you to quit, with the forceful phrase “Give Up, Robot!”. Swing from location to location with your trusty grappling hook (accessible by hitting “z” or “a”). Give Up, Robot is an addictive puzzle, platformer that will keep you hooked til’ level 50!

This is a game based on pure skill, a little luck and a whole lot of fun! Difficulty was mostly made up on how well you can use the grappling hook, I didn’t face a whole lot of that relied on how you could maneuver around things, based on the sole movement of your character without the factor of the grappling hook altering your movement style. I would like to see that capitalized upon, for levels on upon levels I faced the scenario of using the grappling hook to complete the stage, but I would of liked the grappling hook to be more of a “sometimes useful” item, instead of a “use it, or you’ll die, robot!” type of item. Maybe tone it down on the grappling hook, as fun as it was to swoop around a stage and fly around a stage. The game’s difficulty ultimately came down to your hand-eye coordination, if you weren’t all there, it might be a little tougher, but if you’re a master of the arrow or WASD (like me!) keys, you should be just fine.

This  is one of those games, that no matter how much you die and fail, you can always get right back up and try again, without cursing at the game, yelling something about how you hit the keys, but the game didn’t react or something crazy. In my opinion that effect is compelled by the developer allowing you to almost instantly restart your game after your death. I know a few games that have a five second delay when you die and eventually, the time you’ve waited to restart adds up to the time you’ve actually been playing the game, since technically waiting for a game to start up, with a huge old, fade in, fade out effect, doesn’t count as part of a game, either way Give Up, Robot, perfectly demonstrates how to have your character restart after a game (pro-tip for developers, there) without any significant delays and allows the user to continue immediately. As the game went on, you had to develop your own stratagy on how you were going to complete each level, every one consisted on unique factors that allowed you to take different perspectives and complete a level in a different manner, than maybe, you have in previous level or stages.

Give Up, Robot

Graphics were beautiful, though they might have forgotten a giant “SEIZURE WARNING” sign in the beginning, but what do I know about seizures? Rainbows jumping around the screen, in form of brick rapidly changing colors and screaming “Got a headache yet?”. Either way, the graphics were simple, effective, but if you’re prone to seizures, I don’t know if you’ll want to risk it (please correct me if I’m wrong). I liked the use of motion blurs, which created this neat effect, I loved it.

Sounds were terrific, not “mind-blowing”, but pretty good overall (I don’t even know what I would consider to be “mind-blowing”.). I liked the fact that there were sound effects for every movement that your character made, and also the fact that the sound effects didn’t necessarily, roar over the music, like some games portray their sound effects. Background music was awesome, though in my mind, it seemed to getrepetitive and gave me a slight headache over my course of playing “Give Up, Robot” though that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the game itself. All, in all, sounds were spot-on; they were excellent!

Difficulty ramp was impeccable, absolutely perfect, of course it is a good idea to span your difficulty in a fifty level game, you don’t want to discourage your users too soon or too late. All the levels went in a chronological order, in terms of a sort of difficulty rating, in my opinion and was perfect, for the inexperienced user to become a more experienced user in there term of playing the game. Obviously, in a game like this you could argue, that some levels were more difficult than others, but then again, it all depends on who is playing the game, sure a couple of levels were a little bit easier than the levels before them, but I wouldn’t change a thing about that, a mixture of hard and then a little, bit less than hard, is better than, hard all the time, maintaining a flat line on what would be visible, if you were to convert this into a line graph.

I wouldn’t say that this game had an incentive to come back and play again. It lacked, any sort of in-game achievement system, nor did it include any highscore table or anything that would encourage a user to come back and play again, after completing all fifty levels, but for the user who has not completed all fifty levels, it’s a different story. This game has an addictive aurora to it, and if you haven’t completed the entire game, (at least in my case) there is this odd urge to go back and keep playing. Nevertheless, I would have liked to see some incentive in place to encourage the user, even if it’s the Kongregate API, a scoreboard, anything that could persuade the user to come back, would have been a huge plus for me!

Overall, “Give Up, Robot” was excellent; I loved everything about it! The difficulty was perfect and I also believe the developer executed the difficulty ramp perfectly, to get the play interested and ultimately push them all the way through the game. The game provided a unique, motivational feel to it, whereas, no matter how many times you died and died and died, you didn’t feel the urge to quite (or maybe I’m too patient!) and allowed me to proceed through the game, without cursing at the computer, which I believe is a severe disorder called “Meatboy Disorder” only caused after playing Meat Boy for too long. Graphics were beautiful, though I do not know if they produce seizures or not, they sure look like they do, but I’m not an expert and I believe it’s law (or should be) to have a seizure warning on any product that is prone to cause seizures. Either way, graphics were beautifully crafted and were simple and wonderful at the same time! The difficulty ramp was sublime; perfect! I never once, was confused, nor was once unsure of what my goal was, they introduced you ideas slowly, allowed you to understand the concept and comprehend the situations. In my opinion (like most of this article) I thought that the replay value was lacking. I just didn’t see the incentive to travel back into the game, if there was nothing to achieve and show for your effort; I’d like to see some sort of achievement or scoreboard implemented into the game. All, in all, if you have the time, with nothing to do, bored to death, you better be playing “Give Up, Robot”! [Play "Give Up, Robot".]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynlWrTOsfI4]