When you try a video game, the sources of inspiration are not always clear. Maybe because the team put a lot of their own into it, maybe because it’s a mix of so many ideas that it’s no longer clear which one started it all. In other cases, however, it is blatantly obvious what a video game is inspired by and this is also the case with Akimbot.
Waited for August 29thlet’s talk about a 3D action, platform and adventure game coming to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series which is undoubtedly reminiscent of Ratchet & Clank. The question of course is: is he copying in the right way and putting something of his own? We got a first answer from the demo.
How the gameplay of Akimbot works
If you’ve played Ratchet & Clank, you’ll have more or less an idea of what to expect from Akimbot. On our side we have a pair of characters, Exe – a hard and cold robotic mercenary – who will be our armed wing and on the other Dataset – a small chaotic droid – who acts as support.
The gameplay mix is as expected. We can do double jumps, small sprints and use everything to jump from one platform to another while avoiding the water that does damage to us. We have to smash chests to collect money that can be used to purchase and upgrade our most powerful weapons. Basically, in fact, we only have melee and an automatic rifle with infinite ammunition, but clearly not very powerful.
These last two are our initial tools to eliminate enemies and thus obtain ammunition, which are not found in the environment. This is one of the few nice ideas in the game and, if well exploited, could create situations in which we are forced to juggle between numerous enemies, carefully calibrating how many to eliminate quickly with powerful guns and how many to tear to pieces up close to recover bullets, but risking to suffer more damage.
The demo is very short and only offers us one first section which, we must be honest, is quite flat and lacking in interesting events. The hope is that moving forward there will be more intriguing and impactful situations, with the increase in weapons, powers and abilities of our couple. The developer teasers hint at something, so let’s hope that’s the case.
In the testing phase the conclusion is one Very classic boss battle: a powerful flying enemy machine-guns us with shots flying around the arena, slipping out from time to time to turn his henchmen against us, also necessary to recover ammunition as mentioned.
The narrative and artistic side of Akimbot
If the gameplay is not original, even on an artistic level Akimbot doesn’t have much to say in this demo. We know that it will be a space adventure in a world dominated by robots who for the moment have put on display a very generic design. Even the first setting, a tropical archipelago dotted with metal structures, does not denote great inventiveness.
We also need to understand what the plot and characters have to say. Dataset is a kind of Claptrap with a slightly less annoying voice, a good-for-nothing who somehow manages to get by by talking nonsense and getting help from the real protagonist, Exe.
Our character he is an ex-mercenary who everyone is now hunting and he just wants to survive. The only unexpected feature is the fact that he is not a real hero and we can also eliminate the civilians we meet along the strange path (with comment from Dataset, who however doesn’t seem that upset). Can we consider it a premise for a story with a grayer morality?
Akimbot is a homemade Ratchet & Clank, which could still prove to be a lot of fun if the combat phases and platforming sections prove to be more interesting than what we saw in the demo. This genre of games is based on a continuous evolution of the possibilities of approach and the increase in the level of chaos and complexity of the platforms as you progress, so a demo is not exactly the best way to see the potential. Or at least we hope that’s the case because the first half hour slipped by smoothly, but without any kind of surprise or original element. Mostly we have doubts about the design of the characters and settings, which is very generic, and about the originality of the two characters. We’ll have to wait for the full release to see if our fears are well-founded.
