Brave Soldier - Invasion Of Cyborgs Review

Republished By Plato

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We were anything but brave in Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs. That’s not because its difficulty kicked our asses; if anything, it’s on the easy side. It’s because the ‘best’ way to play it also seemed to be the slowest. The enemies couldn’t shoot as far as we could, so we spent the majority of our time finding the sweet spot where we could hurt them, and they couldn’t hurt us. It may technically be a run ‘n’ gun game, but we played it as a tiptoe ‘n’ gun.

While it’s the most foolproof way of playing Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs, it’s also the least fun. So don’t be like us. Play it properly. Because when you do, Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs may not be the most varied of games, but it has just enough charms to keep you running and gunning to the end.

brave soldier invasion of cyborgs review 1 — Run and gun as a Brave Soldier

The plot is some throwaway gubbins that the title does a better job of summarising than us. It’s all an excuse to toss you into thirty levels of quickfire and not hugely challenging action.

As the Brave Soldier of the title, you have the ability to move, jump and fire. That’s it: it’s not exactly going to send Megaman back to the Jobcentre. Enemies take a few hits, so you’re waiting for the right moment to start firing, in the hope that you can get enough salvos in before they turn and fire themselves. Among the enemy horde are enemies that run, those that fire bullets, those that fire three split-bullets, turrets that follow your every move, homing turrets and more. The enemies all look too much like each other, but they at least have different modes of attack.

It’s slightly more fun than it sounds. Everything’s well oiled and screwed together nicely, making it satisfying to play. Levels don’t do much more than offer the odd moving platform, or series of hang-ropes to drop down from, but – again – they do just enough to keep the attention, and never quite stray into overuse. But the emphasis really is on ‘just enough’. Nobody is going to get effusive about the quality of Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs. In the bare bones of it, it can be pretty mediocre.

brave soldier invasion of cyborgs review 2 — Or sit back and shoot from afar…

There are nice touches though, all threatening to elevate it. Enemies drop power-ups, and these gave us three-way bullets, a gun that fires in a broad helix, and a one-hit-kill gun that took us back to Goldeneye’s golden gun, among others. They’re great until you lose them, which is all too often, sadly. Get hit once while carrying these weapons and they will disappear, and getting hit is common as muck in Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs. You have ten health points for a reason. But getting power-ups isn’t common as muck, so we must have spent about a tenth of the game with power-ups activated, and that was about nine-tenths too infrequent.

There are explosive barrels everywhere in Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs. It makes for some nice scenarios as you wait for enemies to position themselves next to them. Chain reactions can sweep away the threat, and that’s a good feeling. We’d have liked more of them, or more types of barrels, at the very least. Lean into the cliché.

And then there are the three bosses, a golem, gorilla and cyborg, who turn up to add some spice. They’re fine, multi-phased and with clear weaknesses that you can exploit. The bosses are about the only time that you will be able to charge up a special attack, fired with Y, that obliterates their health bar by a third. It’s a good feeling.

brave soldier invasion of cyborgs review 3 — Can you defeat the CYBORG GOLEM!?

But it’s all just a sprinkling of flavour, when Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs needed heaps of it. Levels are too alike, enemies similarly so, and power-ups never stick around for long enough to make engagement feel different. The result is slightly too humdrum for its own good. We hoped something would shake Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs up and give it some zest. Bosses and explosive barrels tried, but were never going to be enough.

Perhaps we got it wrong. Perhaps we were playing a game of ‘find the range sweetspot’, not because we wanted to break the game, but because we’d got distracted and looked for other things to do. And that’s on Brave Soldier – Invasion of Cyborgs. As a run ‘n’ gunner, it never really sparked enough interest to move us out of the lower gears. We were less of a Brave Soldier, and more of a bored one.