Top Ten Reasons Why Astro Boy Omega Factor is a Great Game
Lately, I have been messing about with a Gameboy Advance that I have had since I was young. Out of all the games on it, one that has stuck out for me has been Astro Boy Omega Factor, a game that is underrated beyond belief, and easily the best licensed game ever made. These are some reasons why it is so great. The game is essentially a 2D beat 'em up with some gradius style shooting segments thrown in for good measure.I won't spoil how, but half way through the game, you gain the ability to travel through time and gain information to stop events before they happen. This makes the story progress in a non linear fashion and makes everything more interesting.
In this game, rather than upgrading through experience points, you upgrade every time you meet and then fully understand a character, while there are people littered through the main story, others can be found hidden within the level. Since you become more powerful when you meet people, there is an incentive to explore.
I won't go into much detail, but one of the acts involves a political assassination that spawns from the prejudice that humans have towards robots. This isn't the only dark thing that the story has to offer and it's a nice change from your average Nintendo game.
There are no combos in this game, and a total of only 6 moves, however, each of these 6 moves have an integral role in combat, as every move has a wildly different effect.
As well as the traditional beat 'me up gameplay, there are also 2D shooters and levels that take place in anti gravity
As well as there being a massive amount of them, they are all enjoyable. Ranging from a laser fight against an ancient god, to a robot that's can transform into different mythical animals at will.
The 3 difficulties are the standard easy, normal and hard. However, in this game easy mode is genuinely easy. Normal mode is a good difficulty setting where you need to be skilled enough to dodge some moves and the enemies will punish you for carelessness. Hard mode is completely evil, where you barely have any special attack charges and will usually die in a hit or 2.
The game avoids the common trap of changing the character designs or artstyle that many games fall into. This is great due to the deservedly iconic look of the series.
For pixel art, the game looks absolutely stunning. The lighting is spot on and the robots have details down to the seams that connect the individual pieces of metal of them.
For all those who have seen the Astro Boy series, you will remember this, and while in the game it is exactly the same, it is still a hilarious and memorable move that is made even funnier because of the importance of it. Not a particular game mechanic as much as the look of the game mechanic that is great.