Review: Mekazoo

Imagine there’s a world out there where everything is biomechanical, where life is a mix of technology and organic matter. You live in such a world as a carefree animal until an evil force brainwashes your friends. What do you do? Well, you set out on the adventure into the Mekazoo to free them!

Review

When Mekazoo opens, you only control the Armadillo, whose abilities are reminiscent to Sonic the Hedgehog, as he can spin and propel himself at high speeds, but soon after you fight the evil Frog, release him (by killing him which I think reboots them to factory settings) and earn yourself a tongue flinging companion before setting out to release the rest of your buddies.

There isn’t much of a plot in Mekazoo and it doesn’t need one. You’re here for the joy of using these mechanical animals to fling yourself over long distances and trying to clear the levels as fast as possible while still collecting as many energy crystals as you can and completing all secondary objectives. Having said so, it has some interesting twists, all presented without even a single line of dialogue.

Mekazoo is fast, challenging and extremely fun. At any given time you’ll have two of your animals active and you have to complete the courses—which seem like a mix between classic Sonic and Donkey Kong Country stages—by using their abilities in tandem. Yes, you can switch between the animals with the press of a button and you’ll often have to do so in quick succession to get where you need to go. For example, you’ll use the Frog’s tongue to throw yourself towards a tilted half-pipe, where the armadillo’s boost will propel you further along.

Sometimes, to make things more exciting, there are switches in your path and these change your Mekazoo character pairings and depending on which they are, the dynamics of movement and the use of the animals’ natural abilities changes drastically. The Armadillo, Wallaby and Frog can all propel you at high speeds, but for the Wallaby you need precise timing. The Panda is a slower guy, but he clings to walls, which is extremely useful, particularly when you’re completing the secondary missions in each level. The Pelican, the last buddy you collect

When you clear a level, you gain an emblem, and you need a set number of them to open your way to the boss and some of the more challenging levels, which is why it’s always a good idea to go back to earlier ones and completing the side missions, which come in these flavours: kill X of an enemy type, don’t die, find the hidden character switcher (gold colour) and finish the game in a strict time window.

These challenges increase the replayability factor of Mekazoo, as there are always more thigns to collect, and with the developers mentioning, at EGX, their desire to add Speedrun modes and how they had competitions in the office, I can see myself coming back to this game over and over. In fact, to mark my return to broadcasting tonight, I’ll be playing Mekazoo!

Visually, Mekazoo it’s fantastic. I love the design of the animals, how they’re just an energy core with animal plating. When you defeat them as boss, their core pops up all blue and innocent again and you can see the plating just pop from inside it. It’s pretty cool. Also, gotta love how colourful it is, how gorgeous the backgrounds that even if the platforms are the same, you don’t notice it.

Speaking of the plating, you can customise the colours for their inner core light and the plating itself, even give them “costumes.” I would have liked the ability to give each of them a different costume, as they all share the same. But since I unlocked the Steampunk costume, I have not looked back, so I don’t care about that too much!

And now we come to my favourite part of Mekazoo: the music. I could listen to this soundtrack for hours. I’ve even stopped playing just to listen to the tracks on their own. They’re that good. It’s upbeat funky music to get you rolling, how can you not love it?

The Neon Metropolis hub, full of buildings in the background and neon funky lights!

Who needs a whip? Who needs a hookshot?

The stages here are hardcore!

Evil armadillo!

Love this background!

Take that, Spiderman!

From here you go to the different worlds.

Find these and you have an extra medal at the end of the stage!

Conclusion

Mekazoo is a fun and addictive game with some really cool mechanical creatures with amazing skills. I loved the game at EGX and my opinion hasn’t changed!