The last time I heard the word ‘Recylcetron’, I was in short trousers, sitting at my Commodore 64 playing some utter rubbish mid-80’s video game. In videogame terms it was a world away from the life-like realism, million dollar budgets and countless script writers that we see attached to a modern day game. You can forgive me then when I say I wasn’t particularly looking forward to collecting scrap and delivering it to the new modern day Recycletron that makes up a huge portion of MagNets: Fully Charged.
But I’m partial to an indie game or five so even I, with my mind flitting back to decades past fired up MagNets, crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t be served up a retro treat.
And to be fair to the developers, Total Monkery, I haven’t been feasting on a prawn cocktail starter, beef wellington main dish or that old classic pudding, arctic roll. That’s because nothing about MagNets: Fully Charged looks like anything from an era long gone, even if the old school Comic Sans font throughout tries to drag us back to a time best forgotten.
MagNets: Fully Charged is an arcade title through and through. Polarity City is under threat and the crazy Bloxbots have all gone a bit rogue! It is up to you to find out where the main threat is coming from and save the city from a load of old cubes – ones kitted out with lasers, homing missiles and more.
You play as Faraday, a small android guy who comes equipped with his favourite electromagnetic net. It is this net which he must cast over the Bloxbots, stunning them once, before dropping it over them again in order to turn them into scrap. Pick up enough loose pieces and you’ll be able to send Faraday over to each stages’ Recycletron in order to gain a special component. Place this in a highlighted area and you’ll clear the stage, swiftly being passed on to the next. Occasionally, in an attempt to mix things up a little, you’ll be tasked with throwing a net over an object in order to power it up, all whilst being attacked from all angles. I say it attempts to mix things up, because whilst we all love a trier, unfortunately, it brings very little variety to the action.
The main campaign covers four different areas, but other than a slightly different visual feel, all play out exactly the same, tasking you with repeating the same old stuff over and over again. Kicking off matters in the park, crossing into the museum, wandering through a factory and finally making your way into the final tower, preparing to face the final boss, MagNets could well have brought us a new plan for each stage. That hasn’t happened though and even with each zone being split into five smaller sub-sections, you’ll struggle to tell them apart from one another.
It all sounds like the simplest of tasks and to be fair, you’ll find yourself flying through the opening ten or so levels, wondering if MagNets is actually ever going to test your gaming skills. Split into four distinct zones you’ll need to complete each stage and stop the end of zone boss if Faraday has any hope of saving Polarity City. But it isn’t until the latter stages that you’ll ever need to pull out your A game. With the electromagnetic net easily dispatched with your trigger buttons, MagNets really does boil down to throwing a net, running around a bit, throwing another net and running around a bit more. There isn’t an awful lot of skill required and you’ll find yourself going through the motions, repeating action after action multiple times, trying not to get too bored in the process. Throwing in an occasional leap into the air followed by a quick ground pound let’s you mix the action up a little, but these are usually only needed when there is a huge array of enemies coming at you at any one time.
With the enemies all coming in block form, with a small zapper, a pathetic homing missile or a dodgy laser gun their only form of attack, never will you be troubled in your quest to grab the scrap. Even when multiple enemies come after Faraday at once, you’ll still find yourself swiftly running around in circles, confusing them no end and slowly picking up the pieces as you go. Repetition is the key to MagNets but it’s that same repetition which causes a gamer to quickly get bored. Something which has happened to me numerous times throughout my recycling antics.
There have been times when I’ve been impressed with what is on offer, and the option to go back through each and every level in the challenge mode, trying to complete a number of time based targets, is a nice little addition, but that’s all over pretty damn quickly, giving little other reason to go back again. You could of course unlock all five of the robot characters, checking out their different skillsets in an attempt to liven things up, but again, in practice I’ve found our initial protagonist Faraday to be more than up to the scrap collecting job, leaving the others sitting in the bin just begging to get a run out.
Strangely, there is an option included for a bit of multiplayer action but that is currently unavailable. Greying something out on the main menu and not giving players access to it is a bit of a sin really, and even though a proposed pre-release update is meant to have fixed numerous bugs and thrown in the option to go Bloxbot hunting with a mate, my copy at least has seemingly been by-passed of any such update with achievement glitches and stuttering stages still present. That all-important cooperative mode which could push MagNets into a higher standard of game has still to arrive too.
The devs have also included two further difficulty levels, that of hard and impossible, but how likely are you to go and check those out? The answer is quite simply, highly unlikely, at least as a loner. Throw on that multiplayer promise and I may just find myself delving into the harder stages at some point. Maybe. Possibly.
After spending a couple of weeks with MagNets, I have to admit to struggling to find any real stand out moments to look back on with joy. With a reasonably basic, although occasionally taxing, playthrough just holding on to my enthusiasm by its fingertips, refusing to let go, it’s not the best game you’re going to play on Xbox One this year. On the other hand, if you can look past the visual glitches and achievement problems, the simplicity ensures that there isn’t too much to dislike either.
Total Monkery’s MagNets:Fully Charged could possibly be worth a look if you are desperate for a new game, but I’d hazard a guess that you’ll have better things to do than spend your time sticking scrap in the 1980’s Recylcetron.
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