Out today on PC and consoles, Bish Bash Bots is a tower defence co-op by CATASTROPHIC_OVERLOAD in the style of the ultimately PixelJunk Monsters, only there’s a little bit more autonomy on the player’s part, and there isn’t any cute lil’ chibis to protect.
Frequent readers will know that the tower defence genre is among my favourites, and the aforementioned Q-Games title is one of my all-time favourites. During the Steam Next Fest, I overlooked the demo and, having since played it, regret not giving it on PC as it ticks so many boxes. However, it has a couple of issues, one being quite prominent.
The premise? It’s the future; AI has indeed taken over, and almost everything that was manmade is no longer mancontrolled. Not a real word. Wait – is it? Anyway, four heroes join forces and patrol the skies in their blimp, looking to reclaim humanity’s greatest achievements by bashing them with a hammer and setting off an EMP.
Bish Bash Bots Review (PS5) – Hit Points
Like most tower defence titles, you have a base to protect, and in this case, it’s an EMP device that needs to fully charge before unleashed on your enemies to wipe them out instantly. A gauge fills to 100% before this happens, so your job is to protect it from the nasties and, ideally, prevent it from taking any damage via its hit points.
Each biome has a set number of challenges to unlock cosmetics and towers. Turret space is limited, so you must consider where to actively defend against ground and air attacks and effectively upgrade the turrets to match the opponents. Bish Bash Bots nails it with the core gameplay.
Getting to the nitty-gritty of what makes Bish Bash Bots so incredibly frustrating is the slowdown, to the point that it spoils the game. Whenever there are multiple enemies on screen and where there are active environmental hazards, there’s an unbelievable amount of frame dropping where characters teleport across the screen.
EMP, FPS, WTF?
Before looking up the specs on my PC (which is a high-end laptop), it’s the Bish Bash Bots PS5 version that I’m reviewing. Why on Earth would this struggle so much? Naturally, tower defence games have waves and waves of enemies on screen at one time, and the game, at the time of writing, cannot handle it. At least in my experience.
To add insult to injury, when the slowdown occurs, you end up falling in a hole, or, as with one of the key aspects in the game, you bash an enemy into your EMP base and have to restart again (if looking to perfect the level). It’s not good enough.
Until then, Bish Bash Bots stood in high esteem amongst the best tower defence games. The levels are diverse, there are plenty of enemy types (which my non-gaming wife said were cuter than the player’s characters but not as good as PixelJunk Monsters!), and because you can get your hands dirty with the heroes, you don’t always have to rely on a turret.
With My Hammer…
Each character has a skillset, from shields to speeding up or doing more damage. These are limited and build up over time, but add to the gameplay. As touched upon, when you hit an enemy, they push back in the opposite way you hit them, meaning you can inadvertently set them on a different path and fast-track your demise. Though this makes the game harder, putting aside the frame issues, this is a brilliant feature. There are, unfortunately, no difficulty settings.
Yet another good point about the game is being able to level up your turrets by repeatedly hammering them. Unlike other games, if you run into a crowd, you won’t necessarily get hurt and can do some damage and push back the waves. Co-op is where it’s at, but note that friendly fire is engaged, and you can knock back your partners.
The pros for Bish Bash Bots are enormous, what with the variety of turrets, levelling up system, skills, customisation, and being able to take a dump out of an airship is just splendid. Alas, that bloody slowdown ruins the party, as do some early stages that are a little hard for the more casual, perhaps younger gamers. In my case, I had to ask my kids to co-op with me, but it was too demanding for them by the time we reached the second world.
Still, there is massive potential if that slowdown is fixed. I’ll update this to review to recommended if that’s the case.
