Bionic dues is a turn-based tactics strategy game, that mixes in some roguelike elements. You play as a robot pilot controlling the last 4 remaining friendly bots defending a cyberpunk city from an invasion of hostile robots. The game's individual missions play out similar to a floor in a roguelike.Each mission is a randomly generated grid that includes enemy robots, loot, and various types of terrain that you can interact with.
The player can switch freely between each bot (at the cost of an action). Each bot class has it's own unique set of weapons and abilities. The assault bot excels at tanking, the ninja bot is stealthy, the sniper is good at taking out single targets at long range, etc. Meanwhile, each enemy bots have their own unique abilities as well as bugs that can be exploited. For instance, the TigerBot has a large amount of health, but loses 2 turns every time it takes damage, and the Blunder Bot has a strong attack, but frequently misses badly. The variety of abilities and enemies makes for a wide range of interesting tactical situation, which require careful thought on the higher difficulties (and lots of blasting on the lower ones). Also, you have only a limited supply of ammo for each weapon, so you have to manage how you use your most powerful ones.
In between missions, the player has the option of choosing which mission to do next from a city map. There is a decent variety of mission types, and each one offers it's own challenges and rewards. Additionally, beating a mission unlocks any adjacent mission on the map. Some mission types offer specific types of loot when completed, others allow you to weaken your enemy directly by attacking factories or assassinating "boss" robots. There's even a mission type that will unlock a special "epic" variation of one of your bots, which upgrades it's base stats and gives you an additional powerful weapon.
Also between missions, you have the opportunity to upgrade your bots with the loot that you collected in the previous mission. The loot gives a large variety of bonuses, such as increasing weapon range and damage, shield strength, and adding special abilities such as stealth, and hacking enemy robots to join your side. Most parts consume power to use, while others generate power. This gives you a lot of interesting choices about which parts to equip where.
The different phases of the game are all fun individually, and work together nicely. The soundtrack is excellent, and the voice acting is surprisingly decent. The only negative things I can see about this game are that the inventory management can be a bit cumbersome at times, and that the graphics are pretty basic.
Verdict: 85/100
System Requirements
- Minimum:
- OS: Windows XP SP2 or later
- Processor: 1.6Ghz CPU
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.
- Hard Drive: 300 MB available space
