Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is an interesting title – both literally and in regards to the game itself. The name smacks of 60’s-era B-movies, and the main story mode does a pretty good job of providing an equally out there tale to follow. From my brief time with the demo a few months ago I figured it would be a fun, but short lived, arcade style experience. While that’s true to an extent, I would highly recommend at least checking out the campaign for the 3 or so hours it takes to beat. Doborog through a couple of curve balls at us, and turn what could have otherwise been said short lived experience into something a little more interesting. I won’t spoilt any of the story here, but suffice to say we get more than we bargained for going in.
What I will regale you with though is how the games play. Predominantly melee focused with occasional long range options, we play as a randomly generated drone that is a clone of a human entering the danger zone (obviously). Upon entering the arena we must slash and swipe at various types of enemies robots in order to clear the stage before descending into the waiting area to apply an upgrade between each round. The combat is a bit tricky to get to grips with, but still quite fun in the heat of the moment. Pulling the trigger lets us attack and holding a direction on the movement stick dictates whether we hit vertically or horizontally. A lot of the enemies will have shields or armour to consider, so in conjunction with jumping and dashing we need to angle the correct attack to hit them. Get a good connection and it’s a one hit kill affair, though some foes can withstand multiple weaker hits while others such as the Spider Bot 5000 need their legs chopping down before we get to the exposed main body. I did find it a bit tricky to really get much accuracy going on mind. Most often I just charged in swinging and hoping for the best. We’re as fragile as the enemy and so one good swipe at us will see a life lost, which spells game over if we haven’t built a reserve of clones using the upgrades points awarded for clearing rounds. These upgrade points can also be spent on improving our weapons, buying new ones, or buffing us up with armour, deflective skills and more. It pays to choose wisely but when we lose all of our clones we must start the process over from scratch, so it’s also good to experiment to see what works best.
It’s tricky to hit then, but when we do we’re treated to some lovely looking voxel-based physical destruction. Enemies split in two at the exact point we hit them, while it’s also possible to chop off arms to prevent them from using their weapons, or legs meaning they have to hop or crawl around after us. When there are a ton of foes in a skirmish it’s not unusual to see parts flying all over the shop, especially as friendly fire is very much on. One moment saw one of the Flame Raptors (hell yeah) barrel in to swipe me with its tail only to send all the enemies currently attacking me scattering across the arena, most of which landed in a few pieces. By the time we unlock some of the other weapons such as the brutish hammer and hard to aim but very deadly bow we can cause some serious carnage in the arenas and beyond. Handy, as the later stages get quite tough indeed.
In addition to the main story mode are various challenge arenas, offering tough scenarios with the promise of achievements and some more potential upgrade unlocks. There are a fair few to play through, and of the ones I’ve tried I barely made it half way in each. It’s safe to say then that this’ll likely be where players send most of their time after the shorter campaign is done.
Online multiplayer is also featured, complete with cross platform play. This is always a good thing but especially here where I found it all but impossible to match make when only playing Xbox servers but I got straight into a game with cross platform enabled. There are various modes to try such as endless waves and Kicks Only, and entering into battle with others proved to be a blast. There was definitely a noticeable lag at times to inputs – my attacks would swipe clean through enemies or my team mates hits would register after mine – but for the most part this worked well enough to be enjoyable.
The gameplay is simple enough in nature and quite fun, but outside of the scenarios we’re placed in it doesn’t really differ much no matter what mode we play. There are times where it can feel a bit random in the way we get killed out of nowhere, and after an hour of the slightly awkward feeling combat I was ready to put it down for the night to come back to the next day. I can see this being a fun way to spend an hour with friends online (there’s no local MP) in between other titles, but also not one that the crew will be itching to get back to as part of the regular rotation.
Conclusion
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is simple in nature, offering up some slightly unwieldy physics based combat that is fun enough in short bursts. The story mode offers more than we expected going in and is worth a shot, and there are plenty of challenges for dedicated players to check out as well as online play, but the rinse and repeat nature of the combat means we’ve likely had our fill before the evenings up.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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