By Sean Ewing
Treasure is known for pushing both a system and a genre to its limits and bringing in new ideas that make an ordinary game amazing. Their streak continues with the instant classic, Astro Boy: Omega Factor. The gameplay is deceptively simple, but the controls make it nothing short of a religious experience to fly through a city and whomp the living hell out of the evil robots taking over.
The story starts off simply enough, showing Astro Boy on his way to save his robotic sister from robotic goons. From there, things actually get interesting, with betrayals, new characters every level and a power-up system based on how many you meet. Each character you meet allows you to power up one of Astro’s attributes and the effects are immediately felt in combat. Power up your laser and you’ll notice it’s longer and hits for more damage.
The strange characters are a reference to Astro Boy’s late creator, Osamu Tezuka. All of the characters in the game are pulled from his various works, so unless you are a serious fan of Japanese anime and manga, few of them will be familiar. You might find yourself getting absorbed in the story, in spite of the childish and often outlandish characters.
The gameplay, to put it simply, is a godsend. Treasure has managed to make a deep and inventive combat system using the four buttons on the game boy advance. The triggers activate your super moves, while A and B serve as punch and kick. From here, you can string together multi-hit combos, ending with special moves that wipe the screen of enemies. Not that it will stay clear for long. Treasure knows they’ve made an amazing combat system and they give you plenty of chance to use it. Each of the game’s many stages throw as many goons as possible at you, and you can’t help getting into it when you execute that perfect combo and knock seven enemies together, then nail them with a super beam.
Because of the power up system, Astro Boy’s moves never feel like they are getting old. As you progress through the game and meet more characters, you power up and change your moves, thus extending your combat abilities so you can string together even more moves. The game plays like the classic games of the Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo days, but manages to improve upon them while retaining that simple joy of beating the hell out of huge bosses or hordes of enemies.
The boss encounters themselves are usually an exercise in difficulty, but not unfairness. When you beat them, it isn’t because you figured out a trick or weak point, it’s because you stepped up to the game’s level of challenge. Astro Boy pulls no punches so it feels that much more rewarding when your little robotic boy brings down a giant armed train that spans three screens.
The game does stumble a few times. For one, some of the wackier and bizarre characters can serve to bring you out of the experience rather than into it, and some levels just feel like strings of boss fights, without any of the little guys to wail away on.
The boss fights are generally a great time, but fighting three in a row can be intimidating and frustrating at times. The game is never unbelievably difficult, but for those who didn’t cut their teeth on classics like Final Fight or Streets of Rage 2, there will definitely be some frustration involved. Also, the first ending will likely leave plenty of people unsatisfied, but the second ending is far superior and wraps up everything in a great climax scene.
Astro Boy is a game that is just so innately playable that you’ll run through it over and over again, with a smile on your face each time. As strange as some of the characters are, Astro Boy himself has so much charisma and such determination that even the most jaded gamer will find themselves rooting for Astro as he blasts off into space to save the human race. And it’s a trip you’ll want to make plenty of times.
Final Grade: A
A game absolutely bursting with charisma and playability, Astro Boy is one of the sleeper hits of the year . (Image courtesy www.amazon.com)