Although it’s been having somewhat of a renaissance recently, the cyber punk sub-genre is still very much under used when it comes to video games. Therefore, anything which looks remotely like it fits into that category is something we often take an interest in. So, with just a screen shot of the title we were drawn to Cybertrash, an action platformer with light RPG elements.
The game deals with a world where ‘The Corporation’ controls
the populace by kidnapping and implanting mod chips into troublemakers. Robots
are used to keep people under control and the industrial and natural world have
completely separated. You take control of Jenet, one of the people trying to escape
from the clutches of the evil overseers.
You start out in a sort of reconditioning facility and are
lead on various missions by your handler. These are all basically the same. You
make your way through a level, blasting robots and finding the exit. As you destroy,
you’ll level up and can then raise some of your base stats such as how high you
jump and how accurate your weapons are. There are also crates that can be
hacked to offer up new guns and credits that can be spent on ammo.
Unfortunately, each of the levels looks quite samey with the
same tiles sets and boxes used. Enemies are also quite similar throughout, and
while you get new robots to fight against, there’s no huge distinction in terms
of tying certain foes to certain environments. This does mean that the game
lacks a bit of personality and begins to look generic after a while. When you
compare it to something like Huntdown, where every level is crafted to look at
certain way, and you can really feel difference.
To get around the levels you have a basic move set of
jumping and sliding. You also perform a high jump after a slide. This is an
interesting idea but in practice we found it quite unreliable. There didn’t
seem to be any particular logic to how the slide into a high jump worked. While
this was fine on longer stretches of the level, there are times when you have
to leap from quite small boxes and this often meant we fell down to lower parts
of the stage repeatedly which soon became tiresome.
Something else which also quickly becomes dull is the
incessant dialogue between levels. The story part of the game moves at a near snails’
pace and will often see you just hitting the button to skip through as quickly
as possible. This isn’t helped by any story scene where you need to walk around
the facility, as you move incredibly slowly and there’s no run button. This
aspect of the game could really have done with streamlining.
The weapons you get are excellent though. There’s a decent
variety of guns to try out and each one has a solid and appropriate feel to it.
The shotgun in particular really feels like it packs a punch. The boss fights
are also great fun. Sometimes they can be a little easy if you have certain
weapons set ups, but they were a continual highlight throughout our
playthrough.
Overall, Cyber Trash is an interesting but flawed game. Initially,
the levels are really good fun and allow you to blast away at robots with some
cool weapons. But nothing really changes as you progress in terms of action, look
or enemies. The feeling of repetition started to set in way too early and while
the game remains fun, when you add this to the frustrations from jumping and
some scarce checkpoints it all becomes a bit of a struggle to stick with. Still,
there are some nice ideas on display here and it’s certainly not a bad game, just
a bit of an uninspired one.
Overall 5/10
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