Meet my Fists of Fury
Being a child of the 90’s one of the things that I did every week was watch the Fox Kids lineup of cartoons. One of which that came on was the X-Men show, and I can remember an episode of the show where the team was kidnapped (hijacked?) by an alien named Mojo; who himself is basically an evil TV executive. The reason he kidnapped the X-Men is he needed a ratings boost, and so he had them fight in arenas vs other opponents. You are probably asking why I am rambling on about a 20+ year old cartoon when you clicked on a link about a video game called Kiborg; and well the reason is because this game reminds me a lot of that old X-Men episode.
In Kiborg players will take control of Morgan, a man who has been falsely convicted of war crimes and he has been sent to the worse prison in the galaxy; Bucher Bay. No, not really, that would have been dope though; Morgan is sentenced to 1300 years and not even death keeps him from not serving a single moment as he will be resurrected upon death. His saving grace however is a reality show (hence the Mojo story) where he will fight waves of enemies for his freedom. And how does he do this, with his fist; Kiborg at its heart is an old-school arena brawler type game.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $24.99
Combat in Kiborg feels very reminiscent of the Batman Arkham games, minus the counter. Players have a light, heavy and AoE type attack that they can blend into various combos. Launching flurries of punches and kicks felt really good and fluid as Morgan bounced between enemies. I forgot to mention that this is also a roguelite – because honestly what isn’t any more so players will have to fight and then die to be able to upgrade their character. To that end there are various weapons and implants that players can find during each run that will deal more damage and augment their combat abilities. The bulk of these upgrades will come by way of the cybernetic implants that players will be rewarded with as they progress. RNG is in play here so while players will get set bonuses for equipping gear of the same variety but I never once got a whole set to appear.
These upgrades will not only augment the players power but it also changes their look. The weird, hodgepodge of parts I would end up with put me back in the mindset of my early days in World of WarCraft; having a crazy mismatched set of armor is just a rite of passage, I think. In addition to melee weapons players will have access to guns as well, a small and heavy weapon to be exact. The ammo for these weapons will be replenished as players use their hands but when a melee weapon breaks its gone until you can find another one.
My only real complaints are that Kiborg feels really, well kind of janky. Visually the game does really well to showcase its gritty, futuristic type environments. Enemies look like rejects from the Double Dragon movie (Google it) and all of it fits the vibe really well. But while the moment-to-moment fighting is fun and violent, sometimes the controls just feel really jerky. This doesn’t kill the enjoyment or anything as the combat is just really satisfying but when there were times when I felt like I got killed because I was fighting the controls and that sucks.
Kiborg feels like the perfect follow-up from Sobaka Studio; the team behind Redeemer and 9 Monkeys of Sholin. The growth is really shown in the combat fluidity that runs through Kiborg’s moment to moment gameplay. Yes, it is a roguelite so players can expect to die many, many, many times before they find the perfect cybernetic upgrades for success and sure the game is a bit janky; but it’s a lot of fun.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
