Review No. 38 Awesomenaughts - PC (12+)

Strong Points:
Brilliant art style
Nice voice acting
Lots of characters
Lots of upgrades and weapons
Nice gameplay
Addictive
Leaderboards are not out of reach

Weak Points:
When you die, you have to wait ages to get back in the game during the later stages
Hard to get Solar
Balancing
Weak almost non-existent storyline

In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: August 1, 2012

Controls:
Arrow Keys: move/jump
Mouse: aim
Left Click: shoot
Right Click: shoot special
Mouse 3: special

This game is a brilliant game for the bargain price of £9.99 on Steam. It is an online, 3 on 3, side-scrolling shooter with 15 characters and more being added over time. All of them have unique abilities which can aid you in battle, although some are better than others.

The storyline is there to set up the game and consists of one cut-scene although the voice acting is good. Next you go through the tutorial and are then in the game. You can choose from a battle which you set up, quick match or practice match. For Battle and Quick Match your rankings get saved and you can move up and down leaderboards.

You start by choosing your character and items (when you unlock it). You are either in red or blue and start with some Solar (the games currency and what you are fighting over) to get you started. You can buy weapons and upgrades from your base and the idea is to destroy the other team's towers and eventually their base.

Sadly, some Awesomenaughts are more powerful than the others and this along with the difficulty of getting Solar, leads to some balancing issues. There is also the problem of having to wait to wait a full 1/2 a minute to get back in the action! Now, this may not seem much but if you are out of action for 1/2 a minute, the other team could easily destroy a tower. And this brings me to my last problem. Due to it being a relatively obscure game, most players are replaced by bots by the computer. As these are controlled by the computer they are sometimes either dumb or really powerful leading to some other balancing issues.

However, the leaderboards, achievements and bright, colourful feel of the setting and characters makes this game fun and addictive.

Conclusion: once they sort out all the bugs and balancing issues, this could turn out to be a hit. We will just have to wait and see.

Rating: 88%

Thanks for reading, Satamer.

Updates: check out http://www.awesomenauts.com and the Steam page for full patch notes.