Bot Vice

Bot Vice

released on Jul 11, 2016

Bot Vice

released on Jul 11, 2016

Show off your skills & reflexes in this frantic single screen gallery shooter, inspired by titles like Time Crisis and Wild Guns. You play as Erin Saver, carrying out her personal vendetta against the criminal Wildbots. Fast arcade action. Pure gameplay. No filler. The clock is ticking... Literally! Your time to beat this adventure is limited. This feature is the most critical one of the game. If you have N minutes to beat all the missions and you only reach stage 24 before running out of time, stage 25 will remain locked and inaccessible. You'll have to replay previous stages (any stage, at any time, whenever you want) in order to obtain better clear times, gaining extra seconds to unlock the next stages. It's all about understanding and mastering Erin’s small but useful set of moves and weapons, and knowing all enemy patterns. That's the only way you'll reach the end of the adventure. This is our challenge to you.


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Bot Vice es un gallery shooter retromodern de 8 Bits que busca crear experiencias cortas de juego pero igual de emocionantes en escenarios repletos de enemigos y acción por doquier.

La jugabilidad se asemeja a los lejanos arcades de Cabal o Wild guns que derivaron a la primera persona hacia juegos como Virtua Cop, pero Bot Vice se queda con el aspecto más “retro” de estos dando una vista vertical en 3ª persona. Como retromodern que es se apega a la jugabilidad clásica de los arcades, pero añadiendo mejoras y aspectos que solo son posibles con las prestaciones de los sistemas y equipos actuales. El juego otorga un botón de ataque a distancia principal y uno a melee secundario, también añade un botón para cubrirse tras coberturas y otro de roll evasivo. El movimiento queda restringido de lado a lado tras una delgada línea de cobertura que permite cubrirse de los ataques de los enemigos, pero que podrá ser destruida con los suficientes disparos. El objetivo es eliminar a todos los enemigos en el menor tiempo posible para avanzar a la siguiente zona.

Durante el desenlace del nivel aparecerá de vez en cuando un pequeño robot que al ser destruido otorga distintas armas y curaciones para el jugador. Además, repartidos por el escenario en el lado de los enemigos también existirán coberturas para estos que es recomendable destruir, además de otras estructuras con torretas o que generan otros enemigos que también será necesario destruir para completar el nivel. Cada nivel posee su combate contra jefe, en algunas ocasiones este se encontrará desde el principio y en otras ocasiones aparecerán en los últimos momentos del nivel.

La estética resulta en una mezcla entre el retrowave de los 90 con la estética Cyberpunk empleando diseños extravagantes y estilizados. Aunque el título aparente ser un 8 bits, posee detalles gráficos y sprites que claramente superan las especificaciones técnicas de este sistema, no obstante esa es parte de la esencia de un “retromodern”.

La banda sonora se alinea con el estilo synth-rock también de la década de los 90 que busca añadir emoción y frenetismo a la vez que se alinea con el estilo artístico retrowave creando una experiencia audiovisual redonda en este sentido.

La trama presenta la historia de venganza personal de Erin Saver en contra de los Wildbots que han invadido la tierra. La historia no busca ser profunda, permitiéndose ser incluso autoparódica con alguna que otra broma interna, funciona más bien como un “casus belli” para iniciar con la acción.

Bot Vice ofrece una experiencia arcade retro con toques modernos, desafiando a los jugadores con una acción rápida y emocionante. Su jugabilidad clásica se combina con elementos contemporáneos, mientras que su estética y banda sonora retro-futuristas añaden un toque único. Aunque su trama es simple, la intensidad de la acción y el diseño de niveles mantienen a los jugadores comprometidos de principio a fin.

Gema absoluta perdida en los lares del shovelware de la Switch y el PC. Acción retro de rail shooter que para mí, encapsula perfectamente el género y la estética. Wild Guns mob riseup

Ah y está cuidado al milímetro, que para un jueguito tan frenético indie te esperas peor pulido. Jugad esto por favor es además baratísimo es que lo tiene todo

Surprisingly solid, even with a single normal difficulty playthrough. There are a lot of evasive/defensive options at any given moment, to the point that it's very easy to forget about one or two of them (the "Winners Roll a Lot" title card ensured I never forgot about rolling, though that's not always the ideal option), and this can come back to bite you in later stages that call upon the utility of all of those options in some situation or another.
The time mechanic, while hardly strict enough to be that challenging on Normal difficulty (I finished the game with close to 10 minutes remaining on the clock, with very few repeat playthroughs of levels to lower my times - and those that I did only because I felt I'd learned to play the game better since my first run of them), does provide tension throughout every level. Some stages will shower you in a hail of bullets, and while it would probably be easiest to duck behind cover, in the back of your mind, there's a concern that doing so could draw out the level too long, and put you "over budget" for the level; not a horrible thing if it happens once, but if you get in the habit, it could leave you without enough time to reach the ending.
The presentation is mostly good, with enjoyable and fitting music throughout, and clean pixel graphics that clearly convey what they need to and just look good overall. But the voice acting (in English, at least) is abysmal; both the script and recordings seemed like they could have used at least a second pass. Given the retro aesthetics, it would have been more than acceptable to leave it out. As it stands, there's not even the option to turn it down separately (which would have left the cutscenes in silence, and cut down on the enemies spewing contextless 80's action movie references throughout the level - an option which I would have preferred to have). It's not too much of a problem, but it does leave me concerned about how the developer's more dialogue-heavy games will fare.
But that's the kicker: Bot Vice was solid enough that even though I'm not familiar with its inspirations, I really want to see what else DYA games has put out.

lindíssimo, gameplay gostosa e viciante, oq mata é essa dublagem horrenda.

uma hora eu volto pras fases extra

A testament to the transformative power of a well-crafted hard mode.

About a year ago, I shuffled through the game on normal, and felt like it was a little lacking, but playing through it now on hard, and it’s revealed itself as one of the sharpest retro revivals- where every mechanic has some bit of utility you can wring out of it, and briskly paced in a way that few games are, with some new environmental hazard or enemy type that subtly changes the dynamic of combat appearing on basically every level.

Something that really stood out to me as I was grinding away at attempts on some of the later stages, was despite having fixed enemy spawns (which should make the game extremely memorization-intensive), because you have to keep track of your ammo and a million different angles of attack at once, play the same stage over and over and there’s a remarkable variety to each attempt. Really impressive stuff, a combination of strong scenario design and a fleshed-out player kit that makes the game feel fully realized in a way that few titles are- I was never left wondering “what could’ve been” by the end.

That said, even on this revisit, I still had some problems with the structure, with the countdown timer revealing itself as more akin to hitting a quota for collectables in a platformer so you can progress to the next zone, than a constant source of anxiety that could factor into the standard course of play. The game is so compartmentalized and so demanding on hard, that just by virtue of being able to finish a level, you’ll clear each stage with a cushion of time to spare, your speed and survival fundamentally linked, with little reason to go back brush up on your time once you hit an “A” rank. (It would be a totally different game, but I still ended up wondering how the game would play if you had a few credits and had to go through all the stages in succession, racing against the pressure of a ticking clock. Lack of a scoring system also seems much more pronounced now.)

Honestly, I don’t know if my thoughts have changed all that dramatically from my original review; I’m certainly warmer to it now than when I first played it, and I feel like I finally got to see the mechanics at their best, but the bigger thing for me is that it’s been a great reminder of what you might miss if you just blast through every game without ever looking back.