BoomBots
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 R.I.P Neverhood Inc. Why did this studio die with this?
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BoomBots is a fighting video game released in 1999 for PlayStation. It was created by Doug TenNapel, and it was developed by The Neverhood, Inc. and published by SouthPeak Interactive. BoomBots features distinctive claymation visuals and various amounts of toilet humor. The game was both a critical and commercial failure.
Plot
In the year 15 million, a spaceship interrupts picnickers in an American park. The ship belongs to aliens, resembling cats, called the Feline Alien Research Troop (FART), led by alien cat Mandu. They begin abducting Earth's common household cats, using robots known as Boombots, and almost destroy Earth in the process. To stop the world from being destroyed completely, the scientists Dr. Doe, Dr. Pick, and Dr. Newton come up with the idea of just sending the cats to the aliens in a giant rocket. However, what humans do not know is that the cats have been protecting them from another race, the United Rat Infestation Nation (URIN). To bring the house cats back and to stop the rats from taking over, the humans team up with feline-alien double agent Paul to create the Boombots Underground Technology Team (BUTT).
Why It's a Bot
- The game barely explains the story.
- Overuse of toilet humor. Even the shorter names of the organizations mentioned above are shortened to toilet words.
- Lame soundtrack.
- Sluggish controls, especially for a fighting game since here, the controls are very unresponsive and awkward.
- There are characters like a human head and even an airplane, and they look ridiculous and very weird.
- Despite the fact that it has no connection to the Neverhood universe, there’s an insulting contradictory: If you pick Klaymen, it implies that a professor named Dr. Pick invented him as a machine to fight the evil aliens, but in The Neverhood, it was established that Klaymen was created by one of the seeds from Hoborg that Will. E used it to create him in order to save The Neverhood.
- Small areas for a PS1 fighting game, which make the game even more boring than it's already is.
- The game is an obvious cheap clone of Clayfighter, which already had two games on the SNES and one on the Nintendo 64.
- The characters are all unintresting and unlikable (except for Klaymen).
- The in-game animations are horrible, altough nowhere near as: Klaymen Gun Hockey.
- The graphics are terrible, even for a PlayStation game. Even games like Doraemon 3: Makai no Dongeon, Pac-Man World, Bomberman Party Edition and Mortal Kombat 4 all look better than this game.
- Bland and uninteresting premise, even for a fighting game.
- Very weak attacks, making some of your opponents very hard or boring to fight and win the fight.
- Very impossible to win in the hardest difficulty, due to how weak the attacks are.
- The villain is pretty lame and uninteresting.
- It was the final nail for Neverhood Studios on sour note due to commercial failures.
Redeeming Qualities
- The cutscenes are Claymation, which is really impressive for a game made in 1999 and a great choice for that.
- Having Klaymen and the Neverhood stage in the game is kind of a nice throwback to the game.
- The concept art is quite nice to look at, but the execution is very terrible due to this problems.
- Some of the characters design are good.
Reception
Reception for the game has been generally negative. Although, the game has received some praise for its claymation cutscenes, it has been noted to be otherwise lacking graphically. Primarily, criticism has been on the graininess and lack of detail of the characters and stages. In addition, although there has been praise for the thematic diversity of characters and stages, the game has been criticized in ultimately lacking replay value due to missing variety within character movesets. Furthermore, the criticism of replay value has also been fueled by lack of gameplay elements within stages, and repetitiveness in character storylines.
This game has a rating of 2.81/5 from critics on GameFAQs.
Trivia
- The audio for the bonus video got reused in The Impossible Quiz for its main menu and winning screen.