Blood Alloy: Reborn Review

Blood Alloy: Reborn is a fast paced experience. You move around as the Cybernetic Soldier Nia Rhys. You move about as her simply destroying all walks of robotic life. How she moves about is based off of sliding, super jumping, running and slashing.The movement is directed with WASD, and mouse navigating your attacks where you aim your curser. The game itself plays and handles much like a arcade game. So a story really is not even needed or important here. What I will go over here is the deep gameplay and mostly the sound and graphics for this review. So Lets begin.

Gameplay as I mentioned above is mostly a arcade reflex style of game. Where combining your attacks with gun play and sword swinging play a pretty deep role. I have not personally used all of the variations but there are over sixty weapon and armor combos to vary through. Weapons and armor offer variant stats. Another element which seems the dire thing for most games like this now is you can level your character. With this you can unlock some songs, etc etc. You will die, quite a bit. This is how the game is pretty much played out. Survive as much as possible grow a monstrous score, and brag to your friends. At first I felt the burn I will admit that much at first. Then after five minutes into it I got the hang of it, the controls felt right to me. Then I began to get more riskier, trying out new ways to combo. I tuned out trying to keep up a high score and just simply grind out to achieve one. Boy after you do get to that point breaking your last score it began to feel satisfying. Every other level gives you a new weapon or a piece of armor.  Example above again for equipment. The gun and the blade both require some skill to use correctly. With guns you just aim with your mouse or analog stick and just pick down flying or ground enemies slowly. The blade it self has a bit of a homing style to it. Where if you get close to a enemy you automatically attach to them and toss on the damage. This over a short period kills them and you can use that to several ways. To move about. Or just combo up the enemies. I found this the most fun, aside the most risky in certain times of enemies trying to blast me to kingdom-come. You start off with basic pistols and move up the ladder with more firepower to stop a army. Then sliding also has some interesting perks to it. As you slice you can fire homing missiles once you unlock them through a few play sessions. Over time the game grows more challenging. More hazards pop up like wiggling electric wires bounce about on surfaces, requiring you to shot them or slice them away to use the walls or ceiling in its area. There are over three stages in total that you unlock through gameplay. The first one you will see quite a bit off for a while.  The next two are Jungle, and City. Both with different lay outs prior to the first level: Factory. Level design through each play through the enemies felt randomly generated, or I might be wrong about that. Each time I would go through I would see certain enemies in new places. Or maybe they moved around I do not know I am getting old. In my old age after all!~

The music and the sound is sets the center stage to this game.  So much so they filled in certain level up rewards with giving you unlock-able soundtracks for the game for new sessions. A tiny bit of a grind sure. However you do get rewarded with a great soundtrack to kick back with as your kicking down some robotic scum. The graphics are usually a back seat for me, game play always plays a core role. Then secondary could this category come into my mind. Visually the game combines a slick pixel style to it. Explosions and laser fire across the screen in all its pixel glory was a delight to witness. Animations were lively and Nia looked badass sliding about throwing missiles out of her hips, or … wait where do they come from! Enemy deaths felt like a forbidden fruit to bite into as they explode in sparks and flames. All of this graphical presentation to me held the games style together quite well without doing the whole nostalgia gimmick too hard.

In Closing:

Blood Alloy: Reborn is a fast paced high score fest. With plenty to offer for players who love a good challenge and plenty of trial and error to the games play style. Things felt a little different every session I ran through. At least whenever I swapped out and tried a new weapon or armor(core) out for the first time to see how it worked. If you love a good old intense shooter that gives out the arcade vibe this game is for you!

Recommended –

– If you like old school arcade action

– A booming soundtrack

– Have a Gamepad(Xbox360 one works wonderful) or are accustomed to Keyboard and mouse style shooters