Bionic Dues Reviews

These guys make some great games.

For a $10 game, I think I got my money's worth.

I was first introduced to Arcen games through the AI War franchise, so that was the one that I've experienced for the first time. And as fascinated as I was with the setting, I've heard that Arcen games had more games that were based on the same universe as AI War, an "Arcen-verse" if you will. Since I was curious about the whole universe, I've decided to go through the games. So Bionic Dues is set on one of the earliest events of the chronology of the Arcen-verse, there is a robot uprising on earth, the bots have destroyed all "fighting mechs" but the 4 we have on our hands, and they have taken over the entire city. We have to put an end to this rebellion, else our CEO overlords will nuke the city to prevent the bot rebellion from spilling over to the sterile parts of the civilization. When we start the game, what we see is a city map, with routes to take between different points, just like the star lanes in any other tactical game with a space setting, just like in AI War for example, only that there is a city wallpaper at the background of these starlanes instead of a galaxy wallpaper. We only start with our own HQ at the beginning, and as I've stated before, the AI has taken over the entire city, so all the other beacons are in "AIs control". This looks pretty much like the galaxy map in AI War already. On top of that, each of these beacons have a different kind of bonus to provide to the player if you choose to conquer them. And, when you conquer a beacon, more beacons on the map that you don't know about are revealed. These are pretty much the same features as in AI War 2. By the point I've realized this, I was a bit frustrated at how similar this game was to the AI War series, as much as I love AI War, I've expected this game to play much more differently than AI War for the difference in genre. They could have at least made the city map function more like a grid map instead of a star map, and sure enough that would have made it feel better imo; as opposed to a game that feels like a reskin of AI War in certain respects. The overall philosophy / gameplay loop also seems to remain the same, despite the difference in gameplay genre. You have to pick your fights and choose your targets, build yourself up and weaken the enemy enough to finally go in for the kill. Though, maybe this aspect is a little bit more different than AI War in a way that it's less extreme and less punishing. Thankfully, the similarities seemed to end there, as the main gameplay is completely different than AI War, it's a turn-based tactical action roguelike that can stand on it's own, and it has it's own fun moments. Ironically, one of the other nitpicks I had with the game is something that is actually different from AI War games: the personification of the AI menace seems to be comically goofy in this game, as opposed to it's terrifying presence in the AI War series. I also wished that each player controlled mech had it's own pilot with their own skills that improved with each battle, and that if a mech was destroyed in a battle, the pilot would die, so we would have to recruit a brand new pilot and his level would have to start from the beginning, just like how it was in Into The Breach. That way, the fact that the humans are more indispensible than the countless manufactured robots would have been more emphasized in this setting, I think. Also a single person being able to pilot 4 different mechs at the same time doesn't make as much sense. My favorite part of the game is, picking and matching different equipment for the weapons of the mechs, that way I was able to turn a missile launcher into a nuke that obliterates an entire room, it's so much fun, lol.