Akimbot

My first thought booting up Akimbot was that Evil Raptor had either incredible confidence or incredible nerve. This is a small French studio openly billing their game as a love letter to Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank, two franchises that basically defined the PS2 action-platformer peak. The result sits somewhere between admirable homage and frustrating near-miss, but it leans closer to the former than critics gave it credit for at launch. The core loop is genuinely satisfying when it hums. You play as Exe, a mercenary robot whose move set is available right from the jump: double-jump, mid-air spin, air-dash, wall-run, and a grappling hook that unlocks later in the campaign. Chaining those together across well-designed stretches of geometry feels great, and the gunplay holds up its end of the bargain. Four main weapons, assault rifle, bolt-action sniper, minigun, and rocket launcher, each have a cooldown mechanic that forces you to rotate rather than spam, which keeps combat tactical enough to stay interesting. Botcoins collected from smashing crates and the environment can be spent at in-game shops to unlock and upgrade a fifth special weapon slot, giving a light-but-present progression loop across the eight-or-so-hour runtime. The traversal and shooting are the two things Akimbot does genuinely well, and they carry the whole experience. Where things get patchier is everywhere else. The game throws a wild variety of gameplay diversions at you, buggy driving sections, spaceship sequences, turret segments, stealth missions, hacking mini-games, a 2D side-scrolling brawler cameo, and they range from fun to actively annoying. The space combat draws loose comparisons to Star Fox and holds up reasonably well. The driving sections are more divisive, with vehicle controls criticised for being clunky. Some of the hacking puzzles, including a Snake clone, wear out their welcome fast. The level design in the back half pads things out with recycled enemy formations, and the checkpoint system can spike into brutal punish territory, touching water does more damage than most enemies, which is the kind of nostalgic design choice that felt fun in 2002 and feels slightly mean now. Story and characters are functional rather than memorable: Shipset is a Claptrap-adjacent loudmouth sidekick who lands about half his jokes, the villain Evilware is agreeably unhinged, and Exe is earnest but a little flat. None of it is offputting enough to derail the ride, but do not come in expecting characterisation to carry you. Technically, the game runs cleanly on PC, solid 60fps even in chaotic set-pieces, and the Unreal Engine-powered visuals punch above what you'd expect from a studio this size. Bold, colorful biomes span beach planets, war-torn battlefields, sand deserts, and space itself, and the HDR lighting on PC makes the world pop. Steam user sentiment has settled into a strong positive position across nearly 700 reviews, which tells you that the crowd who found this game found it for the right reasons. Critics landed in the 65-75 range, which feels about right: this is a game that does one thing exceptionally (movement plus gunplay) and handles everything else with varying success. If you have any soft spot for the PS2 run-and-gun platformer era and have been starved for a new entry on PC, Akimbot delivers enough of that feeling to be worth your time. Go in expecting a competent, fun-on-its-own-terms debut from a studio that clearly knows what it loves, not a genre reinvention, and you will leave satisfied.

Alex · Scout Team

Catch-all

Be the first to comment on Akimbot.