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Astro Boy: The Omega Factor Review
By The Red Fox
The result of having homosexuals successfully create the first robot.
What happens when time traveling robots fight in space in order to prevent the destruction of all his brethren? You get Astro Boy: The Omega Factor, where Factor stands for crap and Omega stands for a lot of. Now, pick up your buckets and dust off your pitchforks because we are going to dig right on in to it all.
For the most part GBA games really don't place a whole lot of importance on the whole plot aspect of a game but for your sake, as well as mine in order to pad this review, I might as well go over what I can remember. The game begins with Astro Boy being created from the soul of a human child, a very homosexual child at that. He is asked by several people to do actions in order to defeat evil robots eventually leading him to Antarctica where he meets with the first robot president. He fights some people who oppose him as President. Who wouldn't? He's a lousy Democrat. Then Astro Boy goes back in time. Yeah, it's that confusing and stupid. There he meets with Sharaku, the central villain in this case, which he fights and later he is able to go back to the present. Sadly he gets the date a little wrong and ends up seven years in the future where robots have almost completely taken over the world. Due to his objections Astro fights all the robots only to learn that Sharaku, yes he can travel through time too, was the one using the robots. Soon a giant head in the sky kills all the robots and the game is over...OR IS IT? Astro is given the power to travel through time like Sharaku, by some divine being, and the entire game is played over again. There are slight variations but just about every battle is the same. At the end of the second playthrough Astro has to play hopscotch through the levels to find different character in order to get the real, and good, ending. This may have been the worst experiences of my life considering it took me another five play throughs just in order to get to the ending.
Technically you are second after Reagan.
Astro Boy is probably the only character that I can really remember about the real game, besides Sharaku who looked like a pinball with three eyes. The annoying thing is, usually several times per level, Astro encountered another new character that had some kind of affiliation to the later hopscotch tactics necessary during the final parts of the game. However, due to the extraordinarily large amount of characters, I found absolutely no way to know which characters reside where and what they said, hence the reason why it took me so long to finish the game. I'm guessing about 50, give or take another thousand, of these characters are present and may I say I hated them so.
The actual playing done in Astro Boy seems to be, like many 2D side scrolling adventures, very formulaic, repetitive, and tedious. There are basically two types of battles here, those battles on foot and those in the air. The foot battles are as they sound, Astro runs around shooting and kicking enemies. The air battles differ only slightly, the only difference being that Astro simply shoots at enemies and refrains from the kicking. The weapons he uses in these cases are pretty hilarious, however, considering one of them includes two machine guns coming out of Astro's butt and then spinning around. I'm not sure but I think the enemies died from the mooning instead of the actual bullets. He also has to lose his arm in order to fire a large laser beam at enemies but this is overshadowed by his ass gun.
The sub-ASSchine gun at work.
It is safe to say that this, being a GBA title, isn't very difficult in the controls category. The setup is basic, Start pauses the game, A jumps, B punches as well as kicks, L fires the big laser, and R fires the butt cannon. There is really no advanced setup due to the simplified weapons and technology Astro seems to be equipped with. Really, for the most advanced robot in the world, you would think he would have a whole lot more bells and whistles. Or at least pants.
Due to the nature of Astro Boy, along with pretty much every game ever in existence, the game has you fighting a lot of boss battles. The bosses in this game leave something to be desired, however, considering none of them really pose as much of a threat compared to the levels themselves. In a regular levels there's a never ending supply of simple foes to fight but the boss battles seem to be miniscule in comparison. For example, one battle Astro fights a sun. That's right, a sun. What makes little sense is why the sun has tentacles or why it can be destroyed so easily. There are also the other numerous battles against small children, tornadoes, and amputee victims which really goes to show how little ideas left for the creators of video games these days.
Look out Astro, it's a quadriplegic!
As I stated above there are many characters encountered during the game and when they are they give Astro different upgrades to better help him better fight enemies [Mega Man called, he wants his gimmick back - Debaucherous Doom]. This is the so called "Omega Factor" which relates to the fact that Astro is really human but that's not the point. The point is the stupidity of getting upgrades from people that Astro talks to for a grand total of two minutes. If that worked for normal people I know a few people who would be at the status of Gods by now.
What seems most shocking to me through the playing of this game would have to be the abundance of moments where Astro was shown to be extremely homosexual. The facial expressions he always gives off when talking to characters makes him look like he was just ask to give gay butch lover (I like to refer to him as Ike) a blow job. It seems to be a mix of embarrassment and joy because he knows what he is about to do. Also, consider all the moments where he speaks of equality for everyone, he is talking about robots but I really know he means queers. Basically the entire game is like that, all the Republicans (humans) want to prevent the robots (gays) from gaining equal rights (gay marriage) so Astro has to try and settle the dispute. When you think about it everything adds up, like the fact that Astro is scantily clad and has guns come out (and in) his ass.
As far as GBA titles go, The Omega Factor is probably on par with all those mediocre games which you play through once on a long car trip and then never play again because you have so many better things to do. Sure, it offers momentary relief from boredom but there are a lot of better things you could do with that time. Read a book, get high on cocaine, scratch somebody off your hit list, take a vigorous constitutional, or even consider writing an article for the Daily Raider.
How many needles of black tar heroin to make this game good?: 7,
unless you are a robot.
What made up George W. Bush word would best describe this game?: Robotsteelmillocrat
Most uncomfortable moment: I wasted two days playing this game and then
continued to do so for another three.