Puz: Cosmic Bugs [by Retro64]

Game Review: Cosmo Bots
Release Date: November 2004
Developer: Retro64
Genre: Casual
System Requirements: 300 MHZ, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 8.0+, Direct3D video card
Players: 1
Price: $19.99
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Way back before there was the Sony PSP trying to steal the handheld market away from Nintendo, Atari took a stab at it. The system was the Atari Lynx, the first of the "16-bit" handheld systems. It looked a lot like the PSP and with much better graphics then were then available it seemed a natural to beat out the black and white GameBoy. I was one of the big proponents of the system, which had a library highlighted by games like Toki, STUN Runner and Rygar. However, the game that I ended up playing the most on my Lynx was a game called  Qix.

Retro64's Cosmo Bots (or Cosmic Bugs depending on where you buy it) is an extreme upgrade of that old concept that captures the excitement and addictiveness of the original gameplay and adds a bunch of 21st century ingenuity and attitude.

In Cosmo Bots you don't have to have a degree to figure out the game play. You have a bot that you control. The bot fires out lines in opposite directions allowing you to make either a horizontal or a vertical line on the board depending on which way you are facing when you press your button. The boards themselves consist of many odd square-based shapes. The gameplay consists create a line across the board which forms a new enclosed area which then fills in and becomes impenetrable. You continue in this process until you have filled in the required percentage of the level to move on to the next level.

Of course if the game was simply moving around filling in the board it wouldn't be very entertaining. There are many enemies (the bugs) who will work hard to keep you from filling in the board. They each have different paths of movement. For example, some follow your movements and others move a bit more randomly with varying amounts of speed. There are in fact two entire sets of enemies: one that moves about the interior of the board, and another that moves along the lines that enclose the board. Each line you create becomes a new path for them. If the line you are creating is interrupted at any time by an enemy on the board, your bot explodes and you move onto a new bot.

The increase in the number of enemies and the different abilities they posses is certainly one of the big improvements on the Qix concept, however it is not the only outstanding addition to the game. When you capture an enemy in an area that you complete he will be destroyed and may release a power-up onto the board that you can catch and use. The power-ups give you different abilities, such as missiles, landmines, time bombs, ice shots, quicker lines, and slow motion.

Cosmo Bots is a very high caliber game that has all the polish and production value of a major studio release. It fits squarely in the puzzle/casual category, but has a much broader appeal than is typical of that genre. In fact it joins an ever growing number of casual games that appeal to just about everyone and provide enough fun to keep gamers coming back for a long time.

Graphics: 9
The graphics in the game are quite similar to those used in Reflexive's Ricochet series and that is a very good thing. There have been quite a few statements in regards to the difficulty of attracting players to games that have 'space' based graphics. Cosmic Bugs will definitely challenge that idea as the graphics in the game will likely attract a larger audience than most casual games do. Each of the bugs in the game is well-drawn, giving them a metallic robo-bug appearance that is interesting to look at and fun to destroy. There is an occasional glitch in the graphics as the sections you've created fill in, but that is a very minor thing and does not take away from the wonderfully themed space feel to the game that is beautifully stunning for a casual game and a solid step above the rest of the pack.

Sound: 8
The sound tracks in the game are very upbeat and provide a hectic feel to the game which is really fun to play to (but don’t get too caught up in the music because the best way to succeed in the game is to be patient and to place your shots wisely). The sound effects are all first-rate and would work well in any space shooter. My only complaint was that the sound tracks got a bit repetitive after playing through a few levels.

Gameplay: 9
Game play is everything in a game like this and Cosmo Bots certainly delivers. The controls are tight and provide two different ways to control your bot, manually or automatically. The automatic control automatically chooses either horizontal or vertical lines based on your position on the board. It didn't really work for me and after creating a few lines I hadn't intended to create I switched over to the manual control, which I found absolutely perfect for my needs. The bot is extremely responsive, which is a must for a game where your moves need to be precise, especially when things get hairy and there are 8 power-ups flying all over the screen...and you need to make sure you avoid half of them while catching the other half.

Value: 10
577 levels! Good night! No matter how you look at it that number is amazing. Of course if the game wasn't so well-made that number might look like a lot of frustration, instead it means you will get more hours of play out of this game that you get out of many more mainstream titles. Cosmic Bugs rewards you well for the little money it costs.

Concept: 8
The game is spruced up Qix clone, so there are a few points knocked off here. At the same time the revamp on the concept, moving the bar a little higher, and providing a different angle on the game certainly provides something that will be the standard for this type of game for some time to come.

Fun: 9
Cosmo Bots is a lot of fun to play and provides a good long-lasting experience that will consume hours of your time and leave you wondering where all the time went. The game allows you to continue within a few boards of wherever you last left off, which is helpful as sometimes you are hot and sometimes things just don't go your way. Though I occasionally got 'bugged' by the mishaps that I created, the game provides a fun experience that will leave players coming back for more and more as they attempt to get through all the levels.

Overall: 9
Call it Cosmo Bots, Cosmic Bugs or Cosmic Bots this game is fantastic and should be an immediate pick-up for most everyone. The high quality of Cosmo Bots and the sheer number of levels give players a first-rate experience that will keep them glued to their screens for many hours as they keep coming back for more and more.
Added: June 21st 2005
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
Score:
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Language: english