OmegaBot is an old-school-inspired action side-scroller that I didn’t really like all that much, to be honest.
For the most part, it’s just fine. But often there are parts that feel deliberately designed to get you or annoy you. There are a couple of rooms where you have to fight against some annoying jumping enemies while the level is filled with spikes or some rooms where there’s lava on the floor and you have to jump your way across disappearing platforms while also trying to avoid some falling fireballs with some pretty unforgiving timing.
Your character, the titular OmegaBot, starts pretty weak at the beginning as you can only move, jump and shoot. Shooting your guns here has a knockback effect which means you can use that to basically “rocket jump” and clear gaps or reach higher platforms. At the same time, you also need to be mindful of this knockback as it might also cause you to fall onto spikes or down holes. Movements and shooting are not always responsive as they should be and it can get quite annoying at times.
As you progress through the game, complete levels, and defeat bosses, you unlock new guns and abilities to use. Abilities like a double jump or even a dash up the pace and challenge a bit, but it takes a lot of time until you finally get to unlock them. As for the guns, after you unlock the one that fires a burst of projectiles, you’ll never use the other ones.
Visually the game looks, how can I say it, I don’t know, heavy? It has a very bright color palette that makes it somewhat difficult to spot what’s background, what’s a platform, and what’s an enemy. It’s just a lot and I wish there was a little more color separation between foreground and background, maybe some more muted colors here and there for added atmosphere.
Having said all, it’s tough for me to recommend OmegaBot to everyone. Maybe get it on a Switch? But if you are planning to play this on a big screen, I would just skip it for now. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a PS5 using a promo code provided by the publisher. OmegaBot is out January 20th 2023 on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
