KIBORG Review - Great Main Course, Terrible Sides
I am going to give you a little bit of inside baseball here. Quite often, during the game review process, especially with smaller titles, the developers constantly update the game. This is just part and parcel with getting early access so that we can get a review out on time. Once you have been reviewing games for as long as I have, you get a good sense of what problems and issues are likely to be fixed before launch and what problems are just inherent to the game. With KIBORG however, that sense was gone; I just couldn’t get a feel for what would be fixed, what would be improved and what, of the game’s many problems, would cease to exist once that all-important day one patch dropped.
This is new territory for me.
You see, I had access to KIBORG about a month before release. This is the ideal situation for any review, and as this is a smallish rogue-like, I promptly finished the game in about 8 hours. I loved the combat loop; it had me addicted from the first run. However, there were a host of problems surrounding the core experience, so I held off on writing my review, hoping that they would be fixed before launch. So I waited and watched. Every time a new update dropped, I would jump back in to see what was fixed, what had improved. Each update undoubtedly made things better, but the grand issues still remained. That didn’t matter to me, because the core combat loop was so enjoyable, I was willing to give KIBORG every chance to fix the issues before I put pen to paper, so much so, I waited until after the review embargo dropped in the hope that the day one patch was the big fix the game needed before I started writing this. But alas, I can wait no longer, and judgment must be passed.
I want to start on the main course of the game, the combat loop. This is where KIBORG shines, and it is what kept me coming back for more. The game basically riffs its setup from The Running Man. A futuristic game show where a condemned prisoner is forced to fight for his life for the enjoyment of viewers. Combat is 3rd person, primarily melee-based but with some ranged combat, and it uses a chunky and satisfying parry and dodge system that takes a little while to master, but once grasped, gives the player a wonderful sense of power. The dodge, parry, combo dance of the melee combat sits somewhere in between the flash of something like Devil May Cry and the precision of Dark Souls, and it totally hooked me.
The game is broken up into 3 floors, each consisting of a series of kill rooms and a boss battle. After defeating each room, players are given a reward. These rewards range from cybernetic implants that give new abilities, mutations that provide both positive and negative effects, currency that can be used at the end of the run to provide permanent upgrades or weaponry to inflict more damage on your enemies. Before moving on, the players are then given a choice of two rooms, each with a specific reward. It is a simple yet clear system that allows players to decide on their upgrade path for each run. Of course, being a rogue-like, once dead, all the in-run upgrades are lost, and the loop starts again. Once the 3 levels and bosses are defeated, the difficulty jumps up, and you start again. This loops 7 times before you get the final ending. There is also an endless tower mode for players looking to push their skills to the limit.
Outside of this is where the problems start. Firstly, the story is just terrible. The writing is childish, with conversations in cutscenes playing out like something you would see at a year 7 production. This isn’t helped by some of the worst voice acting I have ever heard. If you have ever seen the movie Bowfinger, think of some of the line delivery in that, and you will have a good idea of what I mean. There is also the constant prattle of the TV presenter during the game, and his voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I really wish I could turn him off, but alas, I had to put up with his inane commentary each time I completed a room.
There are also a host of tech and balance issues that rear their ugly heads, too. Firstly, graphical glitches like the camera getting caught on the environment, textures not loading, and even disappearing objects are common. The enemy AI can wig out completely and cause enemies to just stand there while you beat them down, and players can get locked in blocking and dodge motions, forcing me to pause and unpause the game to fix it. On the good side of the tech, though, it works perfectly well on ultrawide resolutions, there were no crashes, and while it won’t win any awards for looks, it holds a nice aesthetic that suits the game perfectly.
Balance is another issue with some gameplay elements, upgrades and weapons needing some clear refinement. Melee weapons felt pretty useless, with hit detection hard to judge. Frankly, just using my fists was way more satisfying, so I really didn’t bother with these weapons at all. Also, it is possible to essentially break the game with the right combo of upgrades. In one instance, I was playing the endless tower mode, and after reaching level 50, I walked away, leaving the game running. I came back an hour later to find that due to the upgrade path I had taken, I still had full health and shields. They were recharging quicker than the enemies could damage them. Hardly the challenge an endless mode should provide, don’t you think?
All those issues aside, I kept coming back. The combat was just so juicy. Even now, after I have played about 20 hours of the game, I want to play more. I am going to keep this game installed, hoping against hope that the developers keep improving it, because at its core, it is a whole load of fun. Have you ever ordered a meal, sat down to eat it and while the main element, the steak, schnitty or piece of fish was perfect, but the chips, salad or mash on the side was terrible? Well, KIBORG is a lot like that; you enjoy the meal, but can’t help but think it could have been a whole lot better if the side dishes received the same attention that the main element did.
KIBORG was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
