Cyborg Justice

When talking about old school games, a combination of robots and beat 'em up gameplay would be like a match made in heaven. Something just feels natural about beating the bolts out of robots with your iron fist. Throw in the ability to create your own custom robot, and unique, randomly generated enemies, and a great game is born, right? Then how did Cyborg Justice, a game featuring all three of these elements, end up being so dreadfully atrocious?

The game's intro starts with a spaceship crashing into an alien planet, the pilot nearing death after the incident. Robots, presumably, rebuild him as one of their own, à la The Six Million Dollar Man. However, nowhere is there a reason given for why this robot is fighting other robots. Beat 'em ups are not traditionally known for their stories, but they at least meet the minimum requirement of explaining why the protagonist is beating up legions of street-thugs, something Cyborg Justice fails to do.

However, the selling point behind Cyborg Justice was not the story, but rather, the customizable robots. The manual claims that there are over 200 combinations of robot parts, with an even larger repertoire of moves, but you only need one move throughout the entire game. The fact that this one move is not exclusive to any one part or combination of parts calls into question the entire aspect of creating your own robots. Once the robot is completed, the game begins on an alien planet, with a robot to beat up. Immediately, the game's flaws start to show themselves. Combat is repetitive, which should be expected with the fact that one move completely overshadows all others that could be used.

Combat is also messy and erratic. It is very easy to confuse your robot with enemy robots because the game randomly generates enemies from the same robot parts that make up your robot. Yet the largest culprit behind the clunky combat is not the graphical design, but rather the controls. Put simply, the controls are awkward and clumsily arranged. For example, the robot cannot jump unless moving forward; pushing the jump button while stationary results in blocking. Turning around is also hard, as pushing the opposite direction is not sufficient. Often times, you will mash the controller in order to get things working, resulting in random, sometimes obstructive moves. The manual does not explain any of this well, because most of the instructions are cryptically worded and hard to decipher. Besides, it is not like actually following the instructions guarantees that you will correctly execute the move, no matter how well you follow the instructions. These awkward controls are especially inexcusable, given how Sega the 6-button controller for the Genesis the same year, and that the addition of three buttons could make many of the necessary (and awkward) moves more tolerable than they currently are.

Aside from the combat, there is not much to the game. After battles, all there is left is walking to the next fight. There a few occasions in the beginning that require jumping across one gap, but almost all of the non-combat consists of holding the right button. If too much time has passed between two fights, missiles will come out of nowhere and try to hurt you. However, they are easily avoidable and, with luck and proper knowledge of where enemies appear, can shorten the fights significantly. There are also two types of traps within the battles (a spot that prevents robots from moving for prolonged periods of time, and a spike strip), but like the missiles, they are easily avoidable, do not add much to the game, and can be used against the poor enemy AI.

In fact, enemy AI in Cyborg Justice is very shoddy. It seems like the moves are not generated based on the circumstances surrounding the robot or anything else like that, but rather at random. There have actually been instances where the AI has done nothing and just let you beat it to pieces until it has died. Boss battles are the only exception, but this does not mean that they are any better. All the bosses (except the final boss) are the same, and consist of the same strategy: jump over lasers, beat the boss up, and repeat if necessary. The final boss is just as repetitive, with a very similar strategy. However, the only difference is that there are timing problems with the boss's attacks, making it easy to either get hurt while harming the boss, take a defensive stance to circumvent the timing problems, or both.

However, many video games have had mediocre gameplay surrounded by good production values; games such as Black and Mirror's Edge seemed able to do this with moderate success. However, Cyborg Justice is not one of them. The graphics are lifeless, dull, generic, and get in the way of the gameplay. However, the music is perhaps worse than the graphics, even by the slightly lowered standards of the Sega Genesis. On a technical level, the music is below NES standards, and sounds electronic and static-y, moreso than anything else the system has to offer. In addition, from an artistic standpoint, the music has no beat or direction. All the songs seem like they are random assortments of notes, never coming together in a cohesive musical piece.

Simply put, there is not a single positive aspect about Cyborg Justice that would justify recommending it to somebody. Anything that this game can do, another game has done much better. The entire concept the developers built the game upon around is dead on arrival; the combat is clunky and repetitive to the point of tears; the controls are inexcusably poor; and the production values are abysmal. In summation, Cyborg Justice may be one of, if not the worst game ever made.