I’ll think of it as “my first introduction to motion sickness”. If that makes me sound bitter at all, you’ll have to forgive me. But you see, I’m not one to suffer motion sickness – well, ever, before this.

Reading while riding in cars? Heck, I’ve read while driving! Aerial hijinks in a small Cessna? No problem. Roller coasters? Not an issue. First person shooters? Uh uh.

But this did it to me. Can’t say that I enjoyed the feeling. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying it – though I would warn you that if you are susceptible to motion sickness, you may want to keep the Dramamine handy – or whatever the kids version of that medicine is, as this is a great game for kids.

The background is fairly simple. You play Blitz, a robot on a space station. The space station has apparently been attacked by space pirates – who are also robots. Your goal is to get the six areas of the space station back to operational, so you and your buddy robot (who is tied to a wall, but helps build things for you) can shoot the giant space cannon at the space pirate mothership and blow it out of, uh, space.

Thus, what happens is basically a series of puzzles, interspersed with some robot on robot mayhem. You will need to navigate the space station, figuring out how to get things working again, while fighting off the space pirate drones with a steadily increasing supply of weapons.

You start the game with nothing more than your “Grabby Arms” – we’ll just call them arms, for short – and an EMP rifle. As you progress through the game, you’ll find a money like object called Upgradium that will let you get upgraded by your friend.

The grabby arms are just that – arms. Thanks to the nature of the game (wait a sec, I’ll explain in a bit), you can do all kinds of things with them. You can pick up tons of items and use them either as weapons (against the drones) or just move them around, whatever. Even with nothing in your arms you can do a swing attack to protect yourself.

The EMP rifle is the other weapon you start the game with. It fires an electromagnetic pulse that will temporarily disable (stun) the enemy drones. It won’t kill them, but will keep them off your back. That is, unless they have armor that prevents that.

(Oh, and it works on your little friend, too, but he whines if you shoot him with it.)

As the game goes on you can get other weapons like the fireworks launcher, that takes enemy robots and launches them up in the air in a fireworks barrage, or an elasti-beam weapon that will string multiple objects together. The latter becomes incredibly useful as time goes on, allowing you do everything from create your own pair of nunchucks to tie enemy robots together to use it to solve puzzles.

The graphics are very good in the game (it’s powered by the Unreal engine), but while that’s nice, there’s something more to the gameplay: the physics. (Don’t let me downplay it, though – the graphics are really very very good.)

Everything in the game is based off physics. There are no scripted animations or the such. For instance, Blitz wheels around on a big ball. That’s all part of the physics. So is how you pick items, how they react to being picked up, and how it affects your control.

It means the game is never quite the same, and also means that you can do some really weird and interesting things. (I also think that action of Blitz being on a giant ball for movement is what got to me.)

The user interface is very minimal. Blitz has two gauges on his back – health and energy. Energy comes back on its own, though you can find battery packs to help it, and controls the weapons you carry. Health doesn’t come back on its own, though you’ll find wrenches that help repair you. Those are actually on Blitz, and not a UI element, as you play in third person point of view. The only thing on the screen other than Blitz and the environment is a targeting reticule.

The sound itself is pretty minimal, too. There are sound effects galore, but little music – at least, that I noticed. I was spending my time busily running around (and into things), dodging (not very well) enemy robots, and falling into giant sets of gears trying to do puzzles to notice it.

I had some issues with the game other than motion sickness, though. I found the controls to be a bit delayed, or perhaps a bit sluggish or unresponsive – whether that was the physics, or just the computer lagging, I don’t know. It was frustrating, however. I also found that despite a decent computer (2.8Ghz hyperthreaded CPU, 1 GB RAM, Geforce FX 6800), I had a good bit of stuttering and lag in the game at times. Simply put, it chugged.

But the game was fun. It’s an interesting puzzle game with a good bit of a sense of humor to it. And the fact that all the fighting is simply robot on robot (and often a bit comical) means that kids should get a big kick out of the game, and parents can feel safe letting them play it.