A-BOT A Fresh New Take on an Old Genre
Posted by admin on July 11, 2009 under Free Games, New Games | 
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In many cases there are games that fall into certain tired old genres that we just won’t include in our arcade or review on our blog. Some of these genres include Asteriod like games, collision avoidance games, and Tetris games. These games have been done a thousand times in Flash and in most cases fail to even live up to the originals produced in the late 70′s and early 80′s. The Space Invaders, Galaga, Galaxian games are another we tend to avoid. These game follow a simple formula. Aliens descend from the sky dropping bombs in an effort to destroy you and your bases. Your goal is to protect yourself and your bases. We all know what to expect from these games. A-BOT falls into this category of game but it truly brings some fresh new life into the genre.
The developer of A-BOT clearly spent some time designing and planning his game. He took each element of the genre and built on it. For instance, you have the aliens. Instead of just appearing on the screen from nowhere, the aliens start the game lurking in the background and slowly reveal themselves before launching their attacks. Occasionally they retreat back into the distance before attacking again. This is a subtle change from the formula but it really adds to the gameplay.
The aliens also have a varying arsenal of attacks which keep you on your toes. They will attack your bot with everything from guided green glowing homing bombs which slowly track you and your infrastructure down, to straight forward giant blue energy blasts launched directly at your bot. Be ready they will even attempt to grapple your bot in physical charges.
Instead of destroying your bot outright and causing you to loose a one of a given number of “lives”, the aliens slowly inflict damage on you and your base infrastructure. It is quite a feat to fight one armed after the other arm has been blown off! The progressive damage works really well in this game. After each level you have the opportunity to use funds gained in the previous level to repair damage. You also use the funds to purchase additional weapons. You quickly find that you never have enough funds!
Your bot uses a number of weapons to fight off the aliens. Your plasma cannons launch balls of plasma at the aliens while your bot uses a number of energy weapons to shoot down the aliens. The A-BOTs remind us of the swinging armed APUs from the Matrix movies especially when firing. By moving your mouse forward and backwards you control the angle between the arms of your bot. This allows you to not only fire straight up but to fire in different directions by opening your arms or to concentrate your fire on a given point by closing your arms.
We really have grown to like this game! Even after hours of play you keep discovering new aspects to it. It is great to see a developer taking an old formula and using his own creativity to expand and create something that is truly fresh and new!
Just Click the Screenshot Above to Launch the Game