Kill All The Humans In BigBot Smash
BigBot Smash ($0.99) by Ayopa Games LLC sets evil robots loose in major cities.
Play as one of three giant robots: Blockbot, your classic wind-up toy robot wound up on destroying things; Cyclobot, a tricycle with buzzsaws; and Grimbot, a robot so devious, he doesn’t even need legs to raze a city. All three robots have varying degrees of strength, but all can fire a plasma blaster through their antennas (to make them look more science fiction like).
There are three different modes of gameplay, though all of them focus on the same thing: knock down buildings to receive powerups, and kill any puny human you can spot.
In the main campaign mode, pieces of your robot girlfriend are hidden in buildings across different cities. Destroy the buildings and anything else in your way. It’s kind of like “Desperado” meets “Godzilla.” This is unsettling though, because I’m pretty sure one of Isaac Asimov’s rules about robots is that they can’t date.
Speed demolition mode has you destroying as much of the city as you can within the time limit. Considering how massive these robots are, all you have to do is walk them in a straight line to start knocking over buildings.
Survival challenge focuses more on defending against waves of human attacks. This is my least favorite mode because it became repetitive for me. It starts off too slow, considering how the humans initially just fire handguns. I just found a corner of the board to sit in and picked off anyone who came close. I think intensifying the waves much sooner would make this mode more challenging.
While the overall gameplay is great, the controls do take a little getting used to. Controlling the robots is done through either touch or tilting your iDevice. Touch is the more familiar of the two, though it requires a fine touch. Swiping on the robot will move him in that direction. Tapping will make him jump, but at times I would mean to do one action, but get the other.
Tilting is by far the most intriguing method of moving your robot that I’ve ever seen in an iOS game. This isn’t like “tilt left to make him move left, tilt right to move right.” It’s more like “turn your iDevice 180 degrees to turn around.” This can end up feeling like turning a steering wheel.
However, even if you opt for the touch control, I still recommend using tilt as a viewing option. Being able to pan your iDevice in different directions to view more of the city is a very cool visual, and definitely helps draw you into the action.
BigBot Smash is definitely an amusing game. Playing as a giant robot and knocking over anything that gets in your way is very cathartic. Just don’t step on a church. That didn't turn out well for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
