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PC REVIEW – Plain Sight

Posted April 20th 2010 by Gareth Trinkwon.

Plain Sight

I've always been a bit of a sucker for impulse purchasing, especially when download platforms such as Steam make the whole thing so darn easy. I took a random trip to the Steam Store to see what was new and within five minutes was 50% of my way through downloading a cheap indie title that I'd never even heard of. Often I regret such rash buying decisions, but I'm happy to say that wasn't the case this time.

Plain Sight is quite a tricky game to explain, so I'll start with the basics. You're a robot. A ninja robot. With a sword. Honestly I could end the review right there because I know you're already downloading the game, but I'll continue if only to justify my imaginary fat N-Philes paycheck. The game is based around manic multiplayer action with players battling around from what can only be described as a vast space junkyard, using their bucket-headed robots to zip around the arena launching attacks at other bucket-headed robots and accumulating points. That's the general gist of it.

The concept, along with the controls, is deceptively simple. Unfortunately, scoring points isn't as simple as simply destroying other robots; that just gives you energy, makes you bigger, and entices other players to aim their sights on you. To bank your energy into points, you have to hit your self-destruct and explode. This, naturally, kills you, but converts the energy you've gathered into points to chalk up on the scoreboard. You're therefore presented with a choice: do you keep yourself alive for as long possible, risking the energy you've acquired to score a few more points? Or do you play it safe and blow yourself away at the earliest opportunity, but for less gain? To make the risk a bit more worthwhile, you also get a bonus multiplier for any unfortunate adversaries that find themselves caught in the blast radius of your explosive demise, so big pay-offs can be made for players that choose to risk their energy.

There's something strangely addictive about Plain Sight. It may just be the ease in which you can just enter a game, start fighting, and not stop 'til the sun goes down (and comes back up). Or it may be the incredibly fluid and simple control scheme. You move your mechanical munchkin using the W/A/S/D keys, jump by hitting spacebar and attack by clicking the left mouse button. That's pretty much it. Targeting foes is handled automatically by the game as the camera locks on to the first bot that clearly enters your view. As the match progresses and you score more points, you're awarded experience points that can be spent on various upgrades to increase your character's abilities. Upgradable attributes include running speed, jumping (allowing for double jumps, triple jumps and so on), recovery time after attacking, shields, and you can even add a "spider-sense" alert to notify you when an enemy has his sights locked on to you.

The stages on offer generally conform to random hunks of metal, broken space stations, machinery and even deactivated robots. None of that is particularly interesting – it's just scenery. What makes it interesting is that it's set in space, so all the junk has its own gravitational pull. This allows for some great Mario Galaxy style platforming as you can run all the way around the junk without the risk of falling off. It feels incredibly stylish combining jumps with attacks to slingshot yourself around the gravity of the stage to reach other areas, and it certainly introduces a unique element to the combat.

The game comes packaged with four different modes, mostly based around the same idea. You have basic deathmatch and team deathmatch, Lighten Up mode – which is kind of a king-of-the-hill game in which you have to detonate yourself on glowing parts of the stage – and finally Ninja! Ninja! Botzilla! mode, where all players team up against one super-powered-Godzilla-robot player. You know the kind I'm talking about.

Well there's not much else to say! Plain Sight is a cheap, fun, if not terribly deep, multiplayer smash-em-up that's easy to pick up and play on a whim. And it has sword-wielding ninja robots. If that tickles your fancy, the low asking price to download a copy on Steam certainly justifies a look.

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