Travel to a mysterious, abandoned Crash site and unravel its dark secrets as The Mobius Machine takes you on a 2D side-scrolling, action-packed adventure.
The Mobius Machine becomes the latest classical-style side scroller title to make it to the scene. You might have enjoyed another side scroller genius, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which was released last month. If you haven’t played it, you better do so and not regret it. But if you have, and you’re seeking to enter into more side-scrolling action and go for a game to enjoy on the side, why don’t you pick up this bad boy?
You’ll be getting a very exciting and thrilling Sci-Fi adventure with the likes of lively and action-packed combat and a massive emphasis on exploration. As well as the stunning visuals, animation designs, and more, of course. If you’re a Metroid franchise fan, you’ll love this, too.
Despite being a 2D game, Madruka Works has implemented beautiful 3D, detailed, and vibrant visuals and has one of the best graphics I’ve seen in a side-scrolling game. With a mixture of grotesque and easy-on-the-eye designs of the items, characters, environment, and more. Including the second to none, photorealistic rendering of the water.
Your task is to discover a mysterious alien world, unravel its dark secrets, and, once you do, find a way to escape. The Mobius Machine involves an interconnected open-world experience. You have the chance to explore an abundance of strange environments as you explore abandoned facilities. Before we continue, The Mobius Machine’s visuals deserve a huge shout-out.
Before you start your journey, you’re given two game mode options to choose from. The ‘Standard’ mode allows you to save your progress at save points or whenever you quit the game. And when you die, you can keep items, exploration, and some scraps.
Or the ‘Retro’ mode, slightly like ‘Standard’. However, it’s more difficult because you can only save your progress at save points. Plus, when you die, all progress is lost since the last time you saved. If you want a bigger challenge, you should choose the latter.
The Mobius Machine is actually very informative, especially at the start of your campaign. It provides very helpful tips as you’re playing and when you’re in certain situations. Especially at the beginning of the game when you fall onto indestructible spikes, and they instruct you to hold the required butting to restore your health.
The health restoration system is quite interesting, as it consumes energy to regain health. To collect the energy, you’d have to destroy enemies and need sufficient energy to restore health completely. You’ll know how much energy you’re collecting when the light blue bar below fills up.
The Mobius Machine has great inventory options with weapons, gears, and so on. You start the journey with a very handy Assault Module, a standard module with a high fire range. It has a good firing range, inflicts considerable damage on enemies and explosives, and regenerates alien wastes. Plus, it has unlimited ammo, so you can spray and pray as you please, and you won’t end up paying for it. But you can craft it and make it better.
And speaking of upgrading, The Mobius Machine provides a workbench for you to craft weapons and upgrades. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of crafting your weapons. After crafting the Assault Module at the early stage of the campaign, I was equipped with the Scatter Module, allowing me to shoot bullets in three directions.
It’s more than three times more damage than the standard Module but has a lower fire rate, which isn’t a big deal because of its power. This Module is the most effective at short range, and using the left trigger is required to shoot it. There’ll be more cool modules for you to unlock as you progress.
Upgrading obviously comes at a price; you must have a complete blueprint and sufficient scrap for each item for crafting. You can find the complete blueprints around the world. And sometimes, you’ll need to construct them from three of their fragments. The first time you use a blueprint, you’ll then be able to unlock an item. After doing so, you can use blueprints of the same kind to upgrade it.
Why just have one weapon when you can have two? This is the number of weapons you can equip at a time—the more the merrier. As you progress, you’ll unlock gear. One gear you’ll love is the Weapon Overdrive, which fires much more devastating projectiles. However, unlike the Assault Module, you need to use this weapon accordingly because its ammo comes from collected energy.
You’re encouraged to shoot at anything on-site. Whether it’s on enemies, regenerating alien waste, explosives, or anything else that gets in your way. The Mobius Machine is specifically designed for both gamepad or keyboard and mouse controls equally. So, where won’t there be any debate on which one is better to use? Furthermore, you’ll have a maximum of two weapons for use. Not only can you run and shoot, but you can also boost jump and shoot. This is particularly helpful when trying to aim for higher targets.
Don’t worry; if you’re struggling with aiming in The Mobius Machine and wish to improve it, you can head to the proving ground in the Sector 01 crash site. There will be many spherically shaped targets you can use for shooting practices. They help a lot, so it’s wise to use this area.
When you destroy them, they regenerate, too, so you can shoot them as much as you wish. Near the Proving Ground is a Training Bots area, where you can improve your aim and try out your weapon modules. But be careful because the bots cause damage. In The Mobius Machine, there are other actions you can do that’ll help you during your explorations. Climb, dash, glide in the skies, dive underwater, and so on. But you need to evolve your character to do some of the more advanced actions.
The Mobius Machine’s combat can become pretty intense at times, as you’re faced against a whopping 80 kinds of relentless foes that used to work in the facilities. The likes of infected colonists, abandoned machines, and the local fauna are lurking around, looking to take down anyone they lay their sights on. Plus, with the impressive enemy variety, you don’t know exactly what you’re up against as you progress, so upgrading your Arsenal and evolving your mobility is imperative. Especially when up against bosses.
Playing The Mobius Machine gives exciting and action-packed goodness and a nostalgic experience, especially with the old heads to rekindle their childhood. There are so many things to do in this game to keep your interest from beginning to end. The only negative is that their enemies aren’t as challenging as I’d like. Yes, the weapons were upgraded, and the character evolved, but there should still be an adequate challenge. Nonetheless, I definitely would recommend this. If you still need more incentive, there’s a demo you can install and try for yourself.
