Astro Boy: Omega Factor

"Average Boy: The Cash in Factor"

I first went to gamestop to purchase Tactics Orge: The Knight of Lodis. They had four copies so I decided to look around a bit, checking out the GBA games. I noticed they had a used copy of Astro Boy: Omega Factor, supposedly one of the greater games of 2004. People were always saying that we should buy more games like this, so I did. I sped home knowing i had bought one of the greatest GBA games there was.

Lord was I wrong.

Gameplay:
Although its basically just a very simple combat system in the end, it has some a few flaws. You jump with A, punch (or kick) with B, move with D-pad and L and R are "super" attacks. Up-B will give you a quick laser beam, the L super attack is a machine gun out of Astro's butt (seriously), which hits everyone on the screen. R is a supercharged laser beam which only hits the enemies in a line in front of him. Dodging is a very fickle matter, and one of the flaws in the game.

In order to dodge, you can ether jump (a very unresponsive jump it is) or jet pack somewhere on the screen. Jetting somewhere is done by ether tapping a D-pad button twice quickly, or jumping and pressing A again and a D-pad button. While jetting you are invunerable, hence the way to dodge. So lets say I'm punching a baddie right in front of me, and he decides to shoot a gun at me. Instead of being able to duck or jump (it would hit me)I have to jet somewhere, anywhere. Doing this will take you at least halfway across the screen, so you may just wind up in another pack of enemies. Again, I would have to run up to him and start punching and kicking, and start all over. Sometimes I found it MUCH easier just to take damage.

In most games, "super" attacks are attacks you save just for the right moment. Not so in Astro Boy! Punching and kicking and just hurting the enemies will fill up a bar that when filled up gives you one super attack. However, using a super attack against enemies will ALSO fill up the meter, and using it against a lot of enemies will sometimes get you a full other bar. At one point in the game, I had 51 saved up! This game has you using these uneven (a charged up super laser beam can kill almost anyone in 1-2 hits) attacks just about every five seconds. Even if you dont want to use these, usually your life depends on them because along with the weak punching, dodging, and kicking, you almost can't beat the game without using these like crazy!

What saves the gameplay (and thus the game)? Shooter stages of course! Astro will ether hover in a inclosed area or be in a stage that will remind you of the old 32-bit shooters. Tapping B many times will give you that small laser for as long as you like, but again, hitting the R and every so often the L button will get you out of these stages.

Also, whenever you meet a new character, your able to upgrade your stats. The HP bar can be made bigger, punch can hurt more, the laser can do more damage and so on.

Graphics:
Good, very good. Astro and the bosses have excellent sprites that animate smoothly. The enemies werent given nearly as much care however, theres only a few enemies every stage (try one, maybe two, rarely three, but never four). To try and make it seem like theres more, the enemies will come in three sizes, and maybe even different colors!! The bigger enemies are heavily pixilated and whens theres more then a few on screen cause slowdown. The backgrounds are very good, and even though they repeat a lot during the stage, you won't mind.

Music:
Horribly generic, but it fits.

story:
The story tries to be very huge, but with only 15 second cutscenes in between stages, it fails. Way to many characters and not long enough game are what really make the story fail, theres 50 something characters for a less then 2 hour game!

replayablity:
After you "beat" the game for the first time, you must again go through all the stages for more cutscenes and because its part of the story (or so it says). Its really the same exact thing with a few more and different speech bubbles.

Also, mostly every stage took be around a average of one FULL minute to beat, so even if there is 21 stages, this game is NOT a long one. I also find no reason to replay it, even if thier is three difficultys (you should start out on easy as well)

Conclusion:

Whats going for it:
+Good graphics
+lots of variety in areas
+pretty neat characters (even if thier is a bit to many)
+really fun shooter levels

Whats going against it:
-bad battle system
-story not really expressed as much as it should've been
-dodging
-SUPER short
-not many reasons to replay it
-awfully generic music

If Hitmaker had spent a bit more time with this game, and maybe even put more shooter stages in there, this would be one hell of a game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/05