Developed by Bit Golem and published by Ultimate Games S.A., Robot Squad Simulator has finally arrived on Xbox One. Previously, the game was only available on PC and Nintendo Switch however with the latest release, more players can dig in this brand new robot simulation title. Unfortunately, the game does not really live up to the expectation that we had before our review. This is our review of the Xbox One version of Robot Squad Simulator X in which we try to save hostages, defuse bombs, and complete military assignments with the help of automated robots.
The game comes with a variety of different missions however you only have four robots at your disposal. You have to work your way through various levels before you can unlock your complete arsenal of robots and their attachments. The game has two different resources that you earn after completion of different missions. This is money and experience. Experience unlocks drones and missions while the money is used to purchase and upgrade different attachments. Each mission requires a particular drone and attachments so you must have them unlocked and equipped before you can play that mission. Without the proper gear, you cannot jump in any mission however this is not a problem because you normally unlock the gear and the robot before a mission unlocks.
Robot Squad Simulator X while bears a pretty concept of using robots and drones to perform different tasks that are too risky for normal human beings, its execution is extremely poor. My biggest concern while playing the game was its gameplay mechanics. Although I did not go in with a very high level of expectations right from the start, when I actually played the game, all I saw was a mess here and there. Right from my first moment where I started moving the drone around, I found the controls to be extremely glitchy and badly optimized. Your very first drone comes with a mechanical arm that can be moved around and it can also pick up different items.
First of all, moving the arm around and extending it forward, high, low, and withdrawing it back are all assigned to the left joystick and you must first press Y to enter the ‘arm’ mode. Otherwise you just move around the drone. To make matters worse, it keeps getting stuck everywhere even where there is nothing in the way. Your safest bet is to retract the arm back to its default position before moving on or you will keep on getting stuck in invisible things. Even if this mechanic is in place to make the arm go back, it fails miserably where the arm actually has to contact certain items.
Often you will need this particular robot’s arm to pick up different items and it then becomes a nightmare. No matter how hard you try, you always end up failing again and again because the arm simply fails to grab the item no matter how close you get to the item. The very first proper mission after the tutorial requires you to pick up a bomb and deliver it to a safe spot. I tried over 10 times and I could not do it because the arm just failed to pick up the bomb. This was made even more awkward by the camera movements. Every time I tried to move the camera around, it would go down under the drone as something would obstruct it. This was made even worse by the fact that the drone for some reason, kept creeping back while I was operating the arm so there was no way to park it in place while operating the arm.
Moving the robots around on the ground was a major problem as well. Every now and then, I would get stuck in seemingly straight areas and with nothing apparently blocking the robot. This problem was more evident on inclines and declines where the robot would suddenly tilt to right or left and get stuck in between something. I could not find any way to reset the robot back to a normal place in the game as well so every time I got stuck, I had to restart from a previous checkpoint. Thankfully, the checkpoints were not that harsh and the game autosaves after every major task or destination. This was particularly annoying in areas where you have to perform different tasks before an autosave and most of the time, it was just traveling from one spot to another.
However, I did enjoy some of the gameplay mechanics and missions were particularly interesting if you could actually get your robot to work properly in the game. The mission concepts were good but the execution was not that good for some missions. The underwater robot and the aerial drone were especially fun to control in the game but they were not short of their own issues as well. Inconsistent controls and glitches are a norm for every robot in the game and this leads to some extremely annoying problems. I was not mad at the game in these situations. I was simply annoyed because these are really small problems to have in the game and it shows that the developers just wanted to push the product out in the market without any sort of final testing or QA.
Final Verdict:
When I found out that there is a game out there where we can control robots to perform dangerous tasks such as clearing out hazardous waste, disarm bombs, and sweep areas to ensure that it was safe for everyone, I was extremely excited to try it out. Even with all the excitement, I went in with low expectations as I often get disappointed while playing games I am most excited about. However, after booting the game up and seeing how the otherwise good concept is hindered by poorly made controls and game mechanics, I was even more disappointed. Robot Squad Simulator X is a game that could have been a lot better. Seriously how many games give us a chance to find and defuse bombs while controlling a robot or control drones underwater? Some factors in the missions do not make sense as well such as why would an enemy sniper be doing in an area which is under lockdown by the police? This was such a waste of a good chance of delivering something that people would have loved to play. If you still want to try it out, you can head over to the Microsoft store and buy the game. However, you must buy it at your own will. If the developers want, they can still try and work on the game mechanics and how the robots react to the environment to make it a lot better.
Final Score: 4/10
