Review - ps4
BY SJ Hollis
Get to the fruit, avoid the enemies, try not to die. Spoilers: you will die.
Hurrah! The PS Vita hit Don’t Die, Mr Robot has finally come to PS4 and it’s every bit as awesome as we hoped. Just picture the same exploding fruit but ten times the size. Now with bananas that big you could seriously take somebody’s eye out, but it’s not the fruit you need to worry about (as a rule); it’s the swarm of dastardly adversaries that are determined to blow your fuse. If you’ve got this on Vita already, this is cross buy so get downloading now, but if this is your first time with Infinite State Games adorable yet unfortunate Mr Robot, prepare yourself for death death and more death. Don’t Die, Mr Robot is a fantastic arcade dodge ‘em up with bags of humour, punnets of charisma and satsuma nets full of fun. Hold on to your melons and enjoy one hell of an indie game.
The basic premise of Don’t Die, Mr Robot is to move around the screen avoiding enemies and trying to survive as long as robotically possible which, believe me, won’t be long. Collecting fruit at just the perfect moment will cause it to go boom right in an enemy’s face and remove it from play. There’s nothing quite like an exploding strawberry, I find, but if you’ve got the nerve to leave your magically appearing fruit right where it is until the screen fills up with low fat delights and mean old enemies, exploding just one peach can set off a wave of destruction that will wipe the screen clean and earn you mega points.
There are four different game modes including Time Attack, Arcade and even an excellent Chill Out mode where everything moves much more slowly to a relaxing elevator ditty. You’d think Chill Out would be easier than the other modes, but it ain’t. Somehow you will still die horribly in a terrible life-ending collision. Don’t worry, though, it really is rather enjoyable.
The main action happens in the Remix Mode. Here each level will have an end goal of sorts. Challenges include scoring as high as possible, collecting coins, only being able to move either vertically or horizontally and playing with a big Mr Robot. By far my personal favourite remixes are the lethal grapes and the danger bonuses. Fruit is usually Mr Robot’s friend, but in some levels touching a grape is comparable to stepping on a sleeping Sumatran tiger. You have to defy your brain and steer clear of this nasty fruit while collecting all the other fruits as normal. It’s much more difficult than it sounds so make sure those kiddies are either in bed or issued with ear muffs, or both.
Danger Bonuses are scored whenever you have a close shave with an enemy, and I don’t mean a rendezvous with a Gillette Five Blade, although you will be getting as close as a man can get. If you only just scrape past an enemy without colliding you’ll get a nifty bonus score. In the Danger Bonus Remix you have to achieve as many of these as possible. Three bonuses will land you a bronze medal, six will get you a silver and so on until you get to a platinum award. Every Remix has this same scoring system and you’ll need to land the best medals you can you unlock all the Remixes in the game. Expect that to take a bit of time, but also expect that to be incredible fun.
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