Akimbot Review

There is nothing new under the sun, never has been. We have been constantly remixing content for as long as recorded history.  So, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the video game industry is already starting to look back at what came before, and either remastering games and improving them, or taking inspiration and fan-making their tributes to previous formulas.

Evil Raptor are very much in the latter camp. The first game by the team’s Head, Nicolas Meyssonnier, was a tribute to Medievil. Now he is back with a full team and an homage to another PlayStation staple Ratchet & Clank.

The plot revolves around Exe, a mercenary robot, trapped on a planet being assaulted by a villain called Evilware. As the planet gets destroyed around him, Exe gets lumped together with a hovering robot called Shipset and the two of them blast their way through large 3D levels in an attempt to stop EvilWare.

Akimbot looks gorgeous with smoky ruins, sandy deserts, and even giant battlecruisers orbiting the planet. Exe is definitely inspired by Ratchet with having a similar profile to him, just more metal in his composition.  

The gameplay has some melee combat but is mainly focused on shooting with a starter laser gun and then a sniper, rocket launcher, and minigun later unlocked. There is also a lot of 3D platforming with double jumps and dashes incorporated into it.

Now, I’ve never played Ratchet & Clank, but I will say that if it plays anything like Akimbot then I never will. The platforming has tons of infuriating jumps, with too-small sections and no proper way to judge where the character is going to land (unlike other platformers there is no shadow to show where Exe will land). There are also lots of places that can drain huge chunks of health which left me constantly irritated.

The shooting is similarly bad – enemies get highlighted onscreen but there is no default lock-on. More aggravating is that sometimes enemies are visible and shooting at Exe but the game will decide they can’t be hit due to them being out of range, maybe? Also, most of the weapons feel weak and hard to aim. It takes too many shots to take down opponents and the recharge system on the guns feels prohibitive to ‘spray and pray’. The Sniper rifle is the most effective (except for when shields need taking out) but every time it is fired it will push Exe back, which can lead to sending him off ledges to his death.

Then to escalate difficulty (like this game needs that) each level will introduce combat arenas where tons of enemies are spawned that are all very accurate and able to reduce Exe’s health bar to zero within seconds. These moments are fullstops when it comes to progression in the game, and I found myself cowering in corners and then popping out to fire a few shots. This is very much a replication of my experience with oldschool shooters, but lacks any charm.

I haven’t even mentioned the special weapons that feel flimsy and run out of ammo far too quickly for me to ever bother using them.

All of this leads to Akimbot being hard without ever feeling satisfying enough to overcome the difficulty.

The final nail in Akimbot’s coffin is Shipset. The sidekick has the kind of grating humour of Claptrap from Borderlands (it even steals a couple of jokes from Claptrap). That in itself would be annoying enough, but Shipset delivers these lineswith the piercing tone of that fairy from Legend of Zelda. My hatred of Shipset is not shared with the developers, because Akimbot goes out of its way to freeze Exe in place and make me listen to it talk. Unskippable cutscenes are unforgivable at the best of times, but when they involved Shipset I was ready to commit murder.  

There might not be anything new under the sun, but this was one experience that made me want to sit in the shade forever.

Conclusion

Maybe Akimbot will play as a loving exploration of an old favourite for some. For those without rose-tinted glasses, this is a deeply unrewarding experience with a sidekick that needs to be launched into the sun.