Rise of the Robots

"Dont judge the game by its cover..."

Once upon a time, I went into my local videogame store with ten dollars burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to get myself a new SNES game. I checked out the bin and came across Rise of the Robots. The box just looked incredible. The graphics looked amazing, and it showed that you could play an assortment of robots which all looked very detailed and dangerous. This was going to be great right?

Wrong.

Controls
Well, you gotta admit. The controls are extremely simple to learn. Unfortunately, they're also sluggish. It's nearly as bad as ''Pit Fighter''. Since the AI has perfect timing without the delay, you'll want to snap your controller in half.

Score: 2/10

Music / Sounds
Some of the music was upbeat, but most of it wasn't. That's saying a lot considering considering there are only about 10 tracks total. As for sounds? There are 5 sounds, maximum. The quality of them are horrible too. You'd be better off listening to your stereo and not the game itself.

Score: 1/10

Graphics
The graphics to this game are superb. Some people claim Donkey Kong's are the best, and others would like to think Star Ocean's are. Well those people obviously have not played Rise of the Robots. From the beautiful reflections on the floors, to the awesome cinema scenes - RotR blows everything else away. Not only do these graphics waste Star Ocean and Donkey Kong, they do it without using any special graphics chips.

Score: 10/10

Gameplay
Ya know, just thinking back on playing this game makes me cringe. First off, if you play the storyline you only get the cyborg character who is quite possibly the worst in the game. After that you get sent into a 6 battle gauntlet. Yup, that's it. 6 battles. Don't get overconfident though, those 6 battles will put you through hell! Every single one of your opponents will be better than you, even in ''Easy'' mode. When it comes time to fight, you either use the only move that will work against your opponent, or you will be crushed into the ground.
Speaking of moves, if you hate most fighters because they have to many of them, you might just like this game after all. Rise of the Robots gives you about 8 moves total, including special, flying, and crouching moves. Needless to say, the odds are against you.
You can play as the other robots in 2 Player mode, the second player getting to choose from the 6 bad guys while Player 1 gets stuck with the cyborg. If Player 2 ever loses, chances are they've never played this game before.

Score: -1/10

Challenge
I really hate games that are difficult not because the enemies are hard, but because the gameplay is so terrible. This is one of those games. This is without a doubt one of the hardest fighting games around simply because of the control lag and lack of moves. It's not like Contra where it's hard because you get an endless barrage of bad guys.
No, RotR is hard because you find an attack opening, press a button, get the crap kicked out of you, then you finally unleash your attack.
This will definitely test your mettle.

Score: 10/10

To wrap it up, this game is just plain infuriating. You'll hate it no matter what. The only practical use I can see for this game is to say ''Booya'' to someone who thinks their game has better graphics. Since chances are you really don't care about that, here's some advice:

Don't buy it
Don't rent it
Don't look at the box

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Final Score: 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/04