Developer.....Sega Publisher.....Sega Players.......1 Difficulty....Medium
One of the first official UK Saturn games, Robotica is a first-person shoot-em 'up based on an orbital space complex. You control a large terrorist robot and you must traverse all thirty levels of the station, clearing your path of any resident robots and eventually destroy the station, ending its overseer status and repelling its archaic traditions.
The first thing to strike you about the game is the FMV intro. About two-and-a-half minutes long, this sets the scene of the game, and despite not being anything better than super long-play in video quality, it is almost full-screen and a decent intro. In game, the graphics are very good, almost PlayStation-like in style. Transparencies are used frequenty, the most apparent being the on-screen map, and the generator guage. The large explosions are transparent, and you can see through the wraith-like bug sweeper robots. The enemy robots are sprites, but they are fully rendered, scale very well, and move swiftly (when they do move). The game tends to slow down at times, but not annoyingly so, and when it moves smoothly it is a real sight to behold. There isn't any polygon pop-up whatsoever (mainly due to the fact that the game is shrouded in darkness). FMV clips are shown every few levels, and these also establish the next continue points.
Your robot is a pretty versatile creature. You get a three-in-one weapon (Vulcan cannon, laser rifle, homing missiles) in your right hand, and your left fist is used for hand-to-hand combat. As you go through the game, you must collect power-ups in order to upgrade each weapon to higher levels. The basic aim of most levels is to find a key and find the exit door, activating a computer to turn the lights on and / or reveal the game map. This is made harder by not just the robots, but the darkness (if the lights are off), undetectable bombs and bug sweepers which lay power-downs in your path if you stay on a level too long. You also have special equipment, such as a blaze laser, which clears your immediate vicinity of robots, a weapon booster, an immensly-fast hover jet, a shield refresher, a plasma shield and a total annihilation device, although these run down your generator (some more than others) and you need to find generator power to recharge it. You have a basic defence shield, and if you are hit when it has gone, your robot is destroyed, giving you an FMV clip of it exploding (being shot, even though you might die from electric floors or bombs; am I being picky here? maybe) and you have to continue from the last restart point. Your robot can also run and strafe (good for avoiding projectiles).
Sound-wise, this game is rather good. Chip-generated sound allows for music to change when you pick up a key to another level (instantaneous change, not a pause for the CD to access - in fact there are no CD music tracks at all) and the darkness of the levels plus the real instruments allows for real atmosphere. You are more immersed in getting to the next level because of the urgency of the music. Some of it is repetitive but that doesn't detract from its purpose, that is, to submerge the player in a realistic environment. The sound effects are beefy and realistic.
Criticisms? There had to be some. For a start, the game has been intentionally limited to a certain theme - run through dark corridors, destroying who gets in your way. While this may be good, it wanes a bit after a while. However, the game makes up for this with the automatic level generator - every time you play, the levels are different in layout, although the levels are a la MD Fatal Labyrinth, that is, the levels are shuffled but not generated. It can get quite tense wandering around blackened corridors. The start points tend to be quite far separated, so if you die just before the next start point, you have to go back a few levels, and your weapons are down-graded. Luckily, you can continue infinite times. The graphics tend to be very repetitive because of the programmers' intentional limitations, and the variable frame rate is a concern, but one that does not really affect the playability.
As it stands, Robotica was and still is a fine game, even better so judging on its release date. It shows, to a certain extent, the Saturn's power, and is good fun. It is difficult enough for most gamers and is never the same game twice (despite seeming so).
Graphics: 81% Audio: 86% Originality: 44% Lastability: 85% Gameplay: 87%
Overall: 85%
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