Mekabolt

A criticism I often hear from people is that most 2D platformers are too hard. They're often built around punishing level designs and unfair obstacles that make the bite-sized levels more frustrating than fun. You won't need to worry about any of that in Mekabolt, because this new side-scrolling action game goes the complete opposite direction. Instead of putting up a challenge, I ended up beating most of the one-hundred stages on my first try. It's cute and controls well, but Mekabolt is the easiest 2D platformer I've played in a long time.

If you've seen Westworld, then you're going to feel right at home at Mekapark. This is a theme park on a tropical island that has managed to find a harmonious balance between robots and nature. But when the control center batteries go missing, the robots turn on the island and fight back against the humans. You play a purple-haired woman with a plan. She's going to use a specialized gun called the Mekabolt to track down the missing batteries and keep the popular tourist trap from becoming the next Jurassic Park.

For those of you who have never shot a Mekabolt, it's basically a way to interact with the robots without blowing them up. A single shot will usually disable them for a short of amount of time, giving our overworked technician more than enough time to avoid them or even use them to her advantage. Each type of robot has its own purpose, which can include everything from being a bounce pad to shooting helpful arrows to blowing our hero into the air with a gust of wind. You're going to need to step on a few robots to collect all the batteries.

One-hundred stages may sound daunting at first, but you'll have no problem breezing through the game in around an hour. These are small, bite-sized stages that normally take no more than ten or fifteen seconds to complete. It's usually a straight-forward path with only a couple obstacles. There are a few stages in the back half that require some trial and error, but I ended up beating most of the levels on my first try.

It doesn't help that you've seen all of these ideas countless times before. The obstacles are a laundry list of platforming cliches, including disappearing blocks, falling spikes, floating platforms, exploding floors, movable boulders, lava pits and even teleportation. I suspect this is at least part of the reason why I had no problem speeding through the game in a single sitting. It's not that I had seen all of these stages before, but I might as well have. Turning robots on and off with the Mekabolt is interesting, but this idea isn't fleshed out in any meaningful ways. Instead we get one familiar obstacle after another.

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On the other hand, Mekabolt controls well. I never had a problem moving the purple-haired technician around and making difficult jumps. When I died, it was usually my own fault. This is a game that gets all of the fundamentals right, which is part of the reason why the unoriginal cliches stand out as much as they do. This is a game with a cool science-fiction set-up and an interesting gun, yet the developer doesn't do anything with these ideas. Sure, it controls well, but Mekabolt is ridiculously easy and over before it's forced to come up with anything original.

If you've never played a side-scrolling platformer before and want to ease yourself into the genre, Mekabolt may be a good starting point. The easy difficulty and short stages may be exactly what you need before jumping into the classics. But if you grew up playing this type of game on 8- and 16-bit consoles, then you may want to sit this one out. The one-hundred stages are too simplistic for their own good and the lack of challenge nearly put me to sleep. Mekabolt controls well and has an endearing presentation, but it's over too soon and is instantly forgettable. This is not for veterans of the platforming genre.