A Robot Named Fight takes place in a futuristic Utopian world populated by robots. After millennia of peace, a disgustingly organic being of flesh, eyes, mouth and reproductive organs, the Megabeast begins to spew its offspring over the planet, and it is up to you to defeat these disgusting hunks of meat. Are you fight enough? The game prompts us as we are thrown into what is decidedly a rogue-like version of Super Metroid.
While A Robot Named Fight has tight controls and a lot of obvious inspiration from the Metroid series, it doesn’t quite deliver on its promise of the feeling of epic exploration and unique runs based on the procedurally generated world maps. While it boasts itself as having four billion combinations of rooms, I started feeling like I was playing the same dozen rooms over and over by the time I got to my eighth or ninth run of the game. A Robot Named Fight, for those that are unfamiliar with Metroid, is a 2d action- adventure platform shooter that emphasizes exploration through finding items that grant you skills that help unlock barriers to your progress. This is actually one of my favorite sub-genres, but combining it with the rogue-like mechanics- such as items that are unlocked for future playthroughs, permanent death, and randomly generated maps, takes a lot away from my enjoyment. It is actually the complete opposite of “epic” when I have to start all over at a new beginning with no idea where to go and very little helpful information to help me do better this time. While I have played other rogue-like games and enjoyed them immensely, I think that the Metroid base doesn’t lend itself well to this particular type of injection.
At least, not for single player. A Robot Named Fight actually finds its footing as offering the unique experience of a Metroid-style game as a local multiplayer affair. Gone of course is the oppressive atmosphere and the feeling of isolation in an alien world, but the ability to bring a buddy along to help blast through the meat sponges populating the world is…a blast. A Robot Named Fight’s other strong points are its use of different power-ups, and its sense of humor. It never really takes itself too seriously, and that makes the game a bit more bearable when you’re attempting another run after a relatively short-lived one the previous time. Particularly speaking, there is a tutorial bot getting ready to die on the opening screen whenever you start over, and talking to it is completely optional, but still entertaining to engage with every couple of runs. An annoying aspect, for me, was that every enemy felt like too much of a damage sponge. I don’t think that I once encountered an enemy that only took one shot to kill, and some meat-things are nearly impossible to kill in tight corridors, which is usually where I found them.
A Robot Named Fight doesn’t really fully capitalize on the Metroid (action adventure platform shooter) formula, nor does it expand on rogue-like games in any interesting ways. It does, however, provide what is potentially an amazing (for the right crowd) single player experience (which is more frustrating than rewarding for most people), but a very fun way of playing Metroid with a buddy.
