Electro Bop Boxing League Review (PC)

If Robot Wars and Transformers had, by some random miracle, conceived an heir for their combined admiration for rich robotic combat and steampunk aesthetics, then I’d like to imagine that the final product would look a bit like Electro Bop Boxing League. If you slot a rich infusion of catchy melodic electro swing into the mix, then it wouldn’t be that far from achieving such an image, to be fair. And I’m all for the idea of having the two together to formulate a poster child for the two grandfathers of their respective crafts. It’s a pairing that just feels right — mechanical boxers and a side serving of gears, fuses, and a trombone to fan the flames of a good fight.

Electro Bop Boxing League is a lot of things, but if you were to remove the elephant—the gigantic mech champions, that is—from the ring, then you would essentially have a boxing game with the added weight of various upgradable components, abilities, and a selection of crew-based synergies. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what this is: a third-person boxing game that waxes the traditional action sport with its own set of rules and regulations. And, by its own rules, I mean the rhythmic nodes that it fosters alongside its auto-pilot system. That’s a whole other story, and one that we’ll get into finer detail about in a short while.

For the sake of lathering a bit of oil over the concept, you ought to know that it isn’t so much of a button-mashing beat ‘em-up boxing game as it is a mech-like dance routine that houses calculated risks and fitting rhythm-based techniques amongst other tricks. If that’s the sort of exhibition match that you wouldn’t mind signing up for, then be sure to read on.

Ringside Swing

As I said earlier, the electro swing aspect is an integral of the game. It’s important, not because it fleshes out the score and, in all honesty, a good ninety percent of the general steampunk-centric audiovisual palette, but because it also plays a key role in the combat, too. Unlike your traditional boxing game, Electro Bop Boxing League incorporates rhythmic timing to the combat experience—an element that, while not always the kindling behind each attack, allows you to execute special abilities and bolster your attacks with certain wild cards, so to speak. It’s still an auto-battler, for sure, though players are encouraged to engage in light rhythm mini-games to elevate their skills and succeed in their respective roles — crew members included.

With the Career Mode fronting the show, players begin their journey with a fairly beat up mech suit—a shoddy piece of equipment that, with the right gear and sponsorship incentives to back it, can be armed to foster a number of new parts, passive abilities, and more firepower. In addition to sourcing better parts for the mech, players also have to fund other aspects of their model—speed, strength, and endurance—as well as manage each crew member’s duties, including training, repairing, and scheduling attacks, dodges, and special maneuvers, for example. To that end, users don’t necessarily pilot the mech, but rather, utilize rhythmic mini-games to both control and influence the battle in their favor. Sounds easy, right? Eh, not really, no.

Timeless and Oddly Elegant

The combat system can be a bit of a headache at first, I’ll admit. However, once the gears begin to turn and the trombone starts to gel with your rhythmic fingers, it is almost as if the stars begin to align and the slog transitions into something slightly more engaging. And I honestly can’t dispute the excitement that ejects out of a good old-fashioned boxing match, either. The fact that it comes loaded with a grainy, albeit time-appropriate art style, too, also makes it all the more immersive. Sure, it’s highly unorthodox and a little kooky — but that’s exactly why I feel so strongly about it. It isn’t your bog-standard ripoff of a generic boxing game; it’s a hybrid of two spheres that, quite frankly, shouldn’t work, and yet they just do.

While there is still plenty of room for improvement here, there is a silver lining to admire, and that’s the fact that the controls feel responsive and comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a little hectic, and I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t require a ton of patience to crack. But, even in its current state, it is still a heck of a good time, warts and all.

There’s clearly a lot of potential for the developer to build on the blueprint here — which would be a fitting way to bolster what’s already been built, for sure. Although it is a single-player game at heart, there’s nothing to say that it can’t broaden its reach beyond its offline and split-screen capabilities to include bigger, bolder, and perhaps even better PvP features. Given that there is still a quality amount of content to chew through in the Career Mode, though, I can bite my tongue and hold out for whatever the devs have in store.

Verdict

Given the fact that creative concepts are gradually beginning to dwindle in numbers, it’s always a pleasure to find something that dares to take a few risks and strive for something a little more unusual. And, sure, while both boxing and rhythm games aren’t exactly uncommon, Electro Bop Boxing League does at least manage to connect the two together in a way that makes the experience feel less of a predictable slog and more of an eccentric and unique challenge.

There’s a huge amount that I absolutely love about Electro Bop Boxing League, its inclusion of a sizable Career Mode and a huge variety of adjustable parts, abilities, and crew specialties, being the driving forces behind the breadth of the commendation. It also rekindles a former childhood memoir that I have in the back end of my head somewhere—the memory of binging episodes of Robot Wars on a lazy afternoon with an old record player jarring out timeless classics or something with sentimental value. It isn’t what I’d usually go for—an arena-based mech battler—but I also can’t help but feel drawn to the idea of touching gloves over some well-oiled electro swing jive.

Electro Bop Boxing League may not be the best boxing game in the world, but it is one that you’ll want to visit for a few hours if you find the chance, if not to channel your inner pianist or swing-addled persona, then to engage in some original combat mechanics and to bear witness two genres coming together to form a surprisingly strong toe-tapping two-piece.