Bish Bash Bots Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Bish Bash Bots (Xbox One)

Monday, February 26, 2024.
by Adam Dileva

It’s been some time since I’ve played a solid Tower Defense game, but whenever I find one I enjoy, the hours seem to just fade away as I play level to level. The latest in the once overdone genre is Bish Bash Bots, an interesting take on the tower defense genre that combines not only strategic placements of your turrets, but bashing robots with your wrench alongside three other friends. If you’re a fan of the Bloons and Overcooked games, Bish Bash Bots melds the two together in an entertaining way that is sure to give some laughs alongside some friends.

In the not so distant future, robots have taken over every single mundane job humans don’t want to do. For some reason though, all of the robots are now malfunctioning and have now turned against humanity. It’s up to a group of four comrades to save the world from the robot onslaught and save the world. This will be done with their tools, building skills, gadgets, and turrets.

At its core, Bish Bash Bots is a tower defense game played on a single screen with a top down view. Your goal is to protect the EMP at the ‘end’ of the stage from becoming destroyed by the onslaught of robots. Where it becomes tricky is that the majority of the levels aren’t a singular path that the robots will follow, and you are also only able to place your turrets in specific spots, so strategy will play a larger part than your typical tower defense title.

With 32 different worlds to play in, there’s plenty of different stages to challenge you, and they surely will. Not just simple backdrop changes, levels can greatly affect how you play that stage across the eight different biomes. Levels start out basic enough, though they eventually add other obstacles and environmental challenges such as multiple paths the bots can take, a gap in the middle of the stage you need to jump across, areas you can’t build on until you smash the giant mushrooms away, poison clouds that block your vision, quicksand pits, goop that blocks your turrets from firing until you clear it, and some boss fights that add even more to deal with. New stages never become stale, as you always have something new to contend with aside from turret placement and robot bashing.

The biproduct of this is that you’re continuously busy. There’s never, if rarely, a moment to rest, as you’re always having to do something, be it chasing after a rogue bot rushing to the EMP, upgrading a turret, collecting cogs or dealing with some environment mechanic. As you destroy bots, they’ll drop cogs, which is your currency to build new turrets, and they may even drop upgrade cubes that can be given to a turret to give it a slight boost in its upgrade meter.

I will say, playing solo, I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. It’s very challenging to do everything yourself, clearly designed for 2-4 player multiplayer. When I was able to convince my daughter to play with me for a few rounds, it was a night and day difference. Trying to juggle everything on your own seems near impossible. It’s not quite, but I had to restart levels quite a few times when trying to conquer it by myself. This is where I found that upgrading one turret multiple times was more powerful than having numerous level one turrets.

The four characters are more than simple color swaps as well, as they each have their own abilities and special power that can be used once fully charged. Some are clearly better in a group setting than others, like the one I chose that upgrades turrets faster, but activating these abilities benefits the whole group for a short time. When playing co-op this isn’t as much of an issue, but solo, some characters are immensely better than others because of their special ability.

While the strategy of proper turret placement and types is the priority, being able to bash the bots is where your brawling abilities can help or hinder. Swinging your hammer knocks the bots in that direction, so if you’re not careful, you might bash them past your turrets, or even into the EMP accidentally. If you wildly start swinging at the bots, they are going to get knocked in all directions, so you need to be a little more precise at the angle you attack from. While your attacks don’t do a lot of damage, it’s usually enough to finish off a few bots that are out of range of your turrets, but there’s nothing worse than seeing the bots get launched into the wrong direction or right into your EMP.

Enemies vary as you progress, become more challenging or having more health to deal with. They start simple enough, but then you have to deal with ones that shield all the robots around them until you give them a whack. Then there’s the annoying flying robots which are the worst because only the anti-air turret can hit them, so you almost always need one and hoped that you placed it along the right pathway.

As you progress in the campaign you’ll unlock new turret types such as a tesla that can temporarily stun enemies, as well as a few new gadgets for your wrench that can be equipped, giving such bonuses and stunning robots that are bashed with it. Clearly the best upgrades though are the cosmetic hats you can unlock, adding flair to your character and simply added for fun.

Again, Bish Bash Bots can certainly be played in single player, but it’s truly meant to be a multiplayer game for four players. Able to be played locally or online, four players makes for a much better experience overall. While having online multiplayer is an awesome addition, it’s done by room codes, so unfortunately there’s no random matchmaking to find players to fill out your games on a whim.

Bish Bash Bots is quite colorful with its varied biomes, and each robot enemy is clearly distinct in design from one another. This makes it easy to tell what robots are coming and which turrets you’re going to need for the oncoming wave. Music is what you’d expect, being light hearted and whimsical to match the cartoon visuals, though nothing really memorable.

Bish Bash Bots is a tower defense game at its core, but with all of its other mechanics in play, it’s quite a unique and challenging one, especially solo. Clearly designed to be played alongside friends, it’s a blast with some co-op buddies, but a constant frustration when solo.

**Bish Bash Bots was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.7 / 10
Gameplay: 8.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Bish Bash Bots (Xbox One)

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