Bikini Alert PC Review: Nothing To Do With Beach Volleyball

Hear me out: Bikini Alert isn’t the title it may appear to be. Ignoring the scantily clad, and mostly irrelevant collectable ‘babes’ in the game, this isn’t a hentai adventure but a run and gun event, available on your IBM compatible device.

We need to support indie games as much as we should support our local businesses. But if they sell dodgy sandwiches, are overpriced, or your local shop owner has the personality of a bulldog licking piss off of stinging nettles, you won’t go back, right?

Bikini Alert isn’t going to evoke keyboard throwing or letters to your local MP or senator, but it will have you sitting aimlessly at the wall, sometimes your monitor, asking the question: is it me?

Bikini Alert PC Review

The Bikini Alert trailer caught my attention as it was such an enigma. I’ll raise my hand and admit that I was dismissive of the title and imagery, but the dialogue scenes were reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, then gameplay was like Tesla vs Lovecraft. I couldn’t not give it a try.

Regarding the story and motivations for it all, it’s not all that exciting and almost purposefully ambiguous, which is fine. The actual logic is a bit mad as you play Cyne Rizerous doing your part as a gravely voiced lead that goes into town with their 007-like transformer, shooting nasties while activating switches. It’s a bit of a mash-up.

You have the option to drive your car about or transform it into a hulking robot, that looks like the car, but with shooty bits. Bikini Alert is a top-down shooter and looks quite sleek with decent lighting and sharp visuals, but despite the setting being in the city, it feels like you’re playing underwater: this is incredibly sluggish.

The movement was so slow that it felt like I was playing the original Max Payne game but in slow-mo all the time. This would insinuate that I could dodge every single bullet as I saw it coming, but the sheer volume of respawning enemies is pretty ridiculous that you’ll die a lot.

Sending A Robot To Do A Car’s Job

In the very first mission, devised by developers Mythic Chest, you have to locate 10 switches and activate them to complete your objective. As you approach the first one, a siren triggers to indicate that the enemies are en-route. They resemble an ‘evil’ version of your vessel, and there’s a hell of a lot of them.

But walking up and hitting a switch is far too easy. To activate a switch, you have to switch to your car and hold down Q to fill a gauge, all the while being shot at. Moving around as the robot is slow – I’ve already said that, but switching back to the car each time eats up the vital seconds you need to dodge attacks. In the end, I used the robot as much as I could.

The respawning element didn’t bother me as much as sometimes there’s an incentive to level up or get a high score, but none of these were present. The issue was how relentless it was but at a slow pace that added insult to injury as I should have been able to have survived longer each time. I have to admit that I lowered the difficulty setting so I could make progress.

Regrettably, the difficulty didn’t have the effect I was hoping, and the deaths were frequent, but more drawn out the further I got into the game – mostly through chickening out and trying to pick off baddies from a distance or behind a corner.

I Like The Sound Of That

The voice talent in Bikini Alert was surprisingly good. Yes, it was a little cliche with the David Hayter type voice – I’m still waiting for a macho hero with a camp voice. Alphas don’t have to sound a particular way each time; they can still do the job.

While we’re complimenting the earholes, the music was also good, and there was a decent variety of somewhat catchy tracks but also ‘epic’ variations to get you in the mood for shooting stuff. 

In fact, the visuals throughout Bikini Alert are consistently good, and a well presented indie title. I just wish the tempo was there and it was less difficult. In many ways, this dampened the whole experience, and I was debating whether I could give a score – not because it’s abysmal and would get a zero, but I don’t want to insult the developers for their hard work.

The anime characters in the game are fantastic and a lot better than the artwork seen in top titles. Still, their presence felt mostly irrelevant, and it came across that there were so many ideas for the game that were included, that it kind of lost its direction, or more specifically, the fun factor.

Put Some Clothes On

But, I have a duty, and I’m not going to chicken out. The disclaimer that follows is that little chestnut for acceptance, to verify that I’m a human and have feelings too (it’s true!). I just didn’t enjoy Bikini Alert as much as I could have, or perhaps wanted to.

There are some good ideas here and like mentioned, the presentation is good with some decent production values. For the price this is listed on Steam, it could be argued that it’s a bargain, but I find it hard to justify any further time to it as the movement and difficulty frustrated me from the outset.

Perhaps you’ll play it (it won’t break the bank), love it then wonder what my problem is. That’s fine, and you won’t be wrong, neither will I as this review my opinion. We’ve established that Bikini Alert isn’t the potential cringe-fest is sounds out to be, but at the same time, the overall gameplay was lost on me, I’m afraid. Do have a look into it though and check some other reviews as I might be the black sheep here, I don’t know.

Bikini Alert Review Summary

Far from the hentai game the title or anime girls depicted insinuates, there are a lot of good, and ‘borrowed’ elements in Bikini Alert. Unfortunately, it didn’t resonate with me due to the slow movement and challenging gameplay.