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Déjà vu
The concept of Awesomenauts is fairly simple. Basically you need to clear out enemies and destroy their defenses, so you can attack their base. Since this concept doesn’t necessarily lead to chaos, each level is designed to start with some kind of choke point. During this time, everyone will be trying to fight off each other trying to destroy the others’ defenses, though advancing might take a while.
Depending on what you decide to start with versus what your enemy starts with, it can take a while for anyone to get a kill. This is especially true with the AI, since they will try to escape at around 30% life. Due to this, you will spend the first couple of minutes fighting off creeps and if you’re lucky, attacking the turret. However, after you get around 1,000 solar for upgrades, things will start to change.
You see, once you start to upgrade your character, you can start to do various things that makes the combat more direct. This can range from bringing the enemy to you, slowing them down, tossing a grenade at them and a number of other attacks. The more you upgrade your attacks, the quicker you can take out enemies, but there is still a strong focus on fleeing a situation. This is due to the woeful respawn system.
Unless your main focus is to win at all costs, the average game will take you over 10 minutes to win. On average, my matches lasted 20 minutes and I never saw a combined score above 30 kills. This is completely due to the game’s respawn system, since the longer the game lasts the longer it takes to spawn. Dying at the start might set you back 3 seconds, but even dying once at the 20 minute mark has left me with 15(+) seconds respawn times. Since no one is interested in waiting that long, plus the additional 10 seconds to fall down to the battlefield and then the time it takes to get to the combat, it’s quite obvious why fleeing is rampant. This problem is only amplified due to the fact you have to destroy turrets to enter their base, thus a lot of gamers will avoid the objectives at all cost. Finally once you win a game, all the skills you bought will be whipped, thus restarting this cycle.
Where’s the Beef?
As mentioned above, Awesomenauts has some problems with most matches feeling the same. While this could easily be resolved with some simple elements, the game is frankly barebones. At the start you can select from four characters, although you can unlock another two down the road. From here, you can select from one of three stages, but they offer only minor differences. For the most part and in some cases, the levels are basically identical on both sides. If you can find energy here on your side, then the same can be said for the enemy side. This design choice was likely made to influence hectic combat, though this lacks any sort of variety or need for tactics.
If you’re uninterested in fighting other gamers or simply want to get used to Awesomenauts, there is a practice mode. In this mode you can select the various levels, but you start with only one. This will continue till you hit level 12, which is okay since you get XP (roughly half of online), but is a little counterproductive since all the levels are playable online. Considering there is only three stages and the last practice level is unlocked in the 20 range, would anyone really need to practice them at that point? Beyond practice there are no other modes, so things like a story mode aren’t included. Additionally, Awesomenauts has only one gametype, so after roughly three games’ you’ve seen all the level diversity out there.
Leveling
A recent fad has been to give more active or skilled gamers an edge, by locking out content till you achieved a certain level. This system is also present in Awesomenauts, which can sour starting down the road. While some of the powerups are extremely useful, like allowing you to slow down enemies to prevent escape, the real problem is shortcut skills. These skills are single upgrades (over several) and offer the same increase for nearly a third less solar. Depending on their build, these skills also stack giving you unobtainable stats at a lower level. This can result in enemies with 30% more attack for some skills, in addition to 90 more HP (almost 100% increase for any given character). This can certainly lower your enjoyment, not to mention making it harder for you to actually level too.
Questionable Future
On Ronimo’s site and in game, it mentions that there will be more content in the future. However, their publisher is in a rather dire situation that almost prevented the games actual launch. Due to this it’s hard to say if any of the DLC will actually release and more importantly implies it will be paid. Nothing can be said for sure, but you should certainly keep this in mind prior to picking it up.
Verdict
Awesomenauts is a fun game, but the enjoyment quickly wears off. Just about every character is broken and basically finds balance in the fact that everyone is cheap with the right build. Even this would be somewhat acceptable is there was more content, but three stages and six characters is pretty small, even for a $10 game. In the end, Awesomenauts is a great concept that could have used some more work.
