MagNets: Fully Charged

This is an industry built around turning simple concepts into the kinds of games you simply can't put down. But even if you come up with the greatest gimmick the world has ever seen, it's important to always find ways to expand on the idea to keep the game fresh. When it comes to MagNets: Fully Charged, UK-based developer Total Monkery managed to come up with a fun and unique concept. Unfortunately, they forgot to do anything with it.

With a name like MagNets and a punny subtitle, you would be right to expect a family-friendly action game starring a cartoony mascot. In this case you play Faraday, a small but capable android tasked with defeating a bunch of blocky baddies known as Bloxbots. The idea is to create an electromagnetic field around the enemies to destroy them, allowing our robot hero to pick up the dropped circuit boards. Collect enough of these parts and you'll complete the stage, but you need to hurry before the Bloxbots destroy all of the valuable buildings.

Although each stage is a little different, they all play out the same way. Faraday destroys a bunch of enemies, snags all of their circuit boards and turns them in for some sort of item needed to complete the stage. Sometimes it's as simple as creating fuses to open doors, while other times you'll need to find levers to trigger larger events. The levels become increasingly complicated the further you get, though they are all fairly short and stick to this basic structure.

As concepts go, this isn't a bad one. It's easy to master and Faraday is able to jump and race around the levels with reckless abandon. But it won't take long for the concept to grow stale. The stages are constantly changing, but the gameplay stays the same. Our android hero never learns new skills or powers-up his armor; he just exists to do the same thing over and over again. Even the boss battles end up blurring together after a while. Sure, the backgrounds are different, but you'll end up repeating the same process with each and every fight.

Beyond the repetition, I also found that MagNets: Fully Charged has an obnoxious difficulty spike about half way through. Instead of coming up with fresh ideas, the game decides to throw more enemies at you. This doesn't make the game more fun; it just makes simple tasks more frustrating.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

It doesn't help that MagNets is an ugly Xbox One game. Faraday is a basic character and the world he inhabits isn't all that memorable. The levels are filled with muted colors and repeating objects. And with only a handful of stages to conquer, I was disappointed with the general lack of variety. Even with a multiplayer mode, the $15 asking price feels a bit steep.

While MagNets: Fully Charged has a solid concept, this Xbox One game quickly runs out of ideas. This turns what could have been an action-packed beginning to a new series into a real slog. There's nothing about the world, character or the Bloxbots themselves that are memorable, which leads to an ultimately forgettable time-waster.