Genesis - B.O.B Review

B.O.B is an action platform game where you play a teenage robot in his father's space car going to his date but unfortunately you crash the space and so you have to travel through the levels to find the portal and get to the car at the end of all of them.

Gameplay: 7/10

In the game, B.O.B the robot has a variety of weapons and gadgets to help him for example, you can get a wave attack and homing missiles. As with most action game characters, B.O.B has the ability to jump, walk while crouching and hang on and travel on horizontal beams or vines. The A button is used to activate the gadgets, the B button to attack, C button to jump and start button to go to the inventory screen where you can get information on your ammo, gadgets, lives and scores. You don't actually need to collect weapons, just the ammo and you don't have to use a weapon just because you have it, you can switch back and forth between your other weapons. The gadgets themselves are fairly useful such as a jumping spring and umbrella to slow your fall although the offensive gadgets such as the light bulb are fairly rare. All of this is limited so you have to conserve ammo and gadgets although you do get to keep your gadgets from level to level. There are also a handful of car driving levels where you

There are a few problems with the game, surprisingly although B.O.B can move left and right on the aforementioned beams and vines, he cannot cling to ledges. Also, there is a time limit to complete each level which leaves little time for exploring and if you die, there goes all your extra ammo and gadgets. The same goes when you use the password which you get every few levels or so. None of your ammo or gadgets are retained making the game harder than it should be finally. Although the enemies in the game look and behave differently for different levels there are only about nine different level types and about four or five enemies in each level. You go through each 'world' which contains three different level types until you reach the end. Considering you have to play through about forty or so levels it can boring looking at the same three level types and enemies. Finally, there is something about B.O.B's jumping which is just downright annoying. His jumping feels less like jumping and more like floating at times which makes precision jumping harder than it seems. All in all, despite the gameplay flaws, B.O.B is still fairly alright as a platform game.

Graphics: 3.5/5

The game is cartoon like but while the graphics and designs are cute, the animation isn't very spectacular. There are only a handful of explosion animations and there aren't many enemies as said before.

Sound and Music: 2/5

The sound and music is adequate and repetitive. Not this game's strong point.

Game design: 3/5

While the game designs are alright at the beginning, what really annoyed me later on were the lack of knowing where I was going to be jumping. This wasn't helped by the fact that dropping too far can stun or kill you and later levels have lava or electricity beneath in areas where you have to jump. The same goes for the car driving levels where the car is extremely hard to manuever Of course, there is the timer problem that I mentioned before, if you don't find the portal to the next level in time your life rapidly decreases and there really isn't enough time to go exploring a great deal.

Longevity: 3.5/5

This game will last most gamers fairly long. With the password system most will probably finish this game, unfortunately the very repetitive nature of the game and taxing levels will not convince many to replay the game.

For: Ability to use gadgets. Has a little personality.

Against: Jumping a bit funny. Lack of enemy or level variety. Very tight time limits.

Game: B.O.B.

Genre: Action

Produced by: Chris gray enterprises

Year: 1993

Platform: Sega Genesis

Runs on: Gens

Scoring Summary
Gameplay: 7/10

Graphics: 3.5/5

Sound and Music: 2/5

Game design: 3/5

Longevity: 3.5/5

Total: 19/30

Rating:

63%

-Reviewed by Barnabas