One of the worst pains I ever got was when my niece accidentally headbutted me in the groin a couple of years back. To be fair, she wasn’t trying to hurt me: she just happened to be at the right height for a cranial cup check when she ran to give me a hug. She’s a kind, precious thing, and so it was exponentially worse that I wanted to vomit and die right there, in the middle of an otherwise beautiful setting. Thankfully, I’ve had all the children my wife and I are planning to have, and I’m pretty sure I can’t have anymore, so life technically has taken a turn for the better. But the experience of so much pain and misery caused by something so cute is indelibly sketched into my brain, much like the adorable masochism of BZZZT will live with me forever.

If I described the plot of BZZZT, you’d think I was just trying to rewrite Mega Man, so let’s keep it short and sweet: scientists create a sentient energy source because we were lacking in those. Scientists put it into a sweet little robot body that gradually gets stronger over time. Evil scientist who was potentially fired flies in, wreaks havoc and kidnaps grandfatherly scientist. Robot goes to get good scientist back safely, and decides that traversing the globe in a speedrun style is the best way to do this. Robot delays actual rescue mission in order to pick up some bolts and hit arbitrary speed goals to make unseen masters happy. Scientist probably dies of old age while robot tries to shave .3 seconds off his runaround time.

Yes, we’re here at the hardcore speedrunning platformer show again, and the presentation this time is truly something to behold. Our wonderful robot, ZX8000, has some excellent precision control in terms of handling and execution. Getting gradually more adept as time goes on, ZX8000 can double jump, do unlimited midair dashes (with minor refractory periods in-between), and seems to catch fire and die like it’s his second job. Each stage has a time barrier for silver and gold trophies, tons of one-hit murder obstacles, and a set of golden bolts to pick up that are scattered anywhere from “along the way” to “way off the trail, death is incoming.”. Sure, you could simply rush to the end like a pansy, but don’t you want to flay yourself in the process first?

Straight up, I didn’t like BZZZT setting the bar at normal as something unattainable for my old-man reflexes, but that’s my conceit more than actual game critique. The normal difficulty is a single touch equals death, unlimited tries, and plenty of patience. Turns out, after I was able to get through the first area I had no patience whatsoever and went back to redo all those stages on “very easy” in order to move ahead. I recommend very easy for people who don’t want to accidentally hurl their Switch out of a moving train window because the game invites you to do just that over the course of your play. However, I have enough insight to recognize this is someone’s bread and butter, so the difficulty isn’t my main hangup with the game (okay, but it is a close second).

Let me start by saying that BZZZT does a fantastic job in the visual and audio departments. When you look at things like Speedrunners or Super Meat Boy, you’ve got these graphics that seem to make compromises to help accommodate for the velocity of the gameplay itself. Not so for KO.DLL and Cinemax Games (wait, Cinemax? As in Cinemax?). The pixel art is tight, on par with Owlboy in terms of density and granular detail, and the whole thing looks fabulous. Moving from the laboratory out into the jungle and…then back into a different laboratory, the detail is undisputed and honestly shines in a big way. Say what you will about the Nintendo Switch’s graphical strength, but this high-profile pixel piece had personality and plenty to showcase.

Additionally, the soundtrack is absolutely next-level. I already got on board with minimal effort thanks to the chiptune music: it’s one of my soft spots and instantly makes me like a game more. But the fact that there are chiptune tracks with vocals mixed in like this is some kind of 90s rave that’s fueled by pre-Matrix burnouts who want to blaze it while talking about Gibson? The wondrous tracks that are synthwave and futurecore and a bunch of electronic nonsense that I am totally here for are available everywhere, and I got this soundtrack almost as soon as I finished hurling my Switch against a soft, padded surface. I can celebrate the soundtrack while cursing the source material.

So what’s the deal with BZZZT? Basically, it’s a story spread across a bunch of single-shot, super speedy levels where you never feel like you’re quite going fast enough. There were times when I thought I was ridiculously on point in terms of hitting my speed posts and ended up almost a full ten seconds behind the line for even a silver trophy, much less a gold.  The bolts that you need to pick up become more and more impractical to obtain, requiring even further out-of-the-box thinking in terms of what the “best” route to the finish may be. This is even more crazy because “best” often conflicts directly with “most logical” or “fastest,” leaving you scratching your head on how to execute this supposed time.

These ideas are only further in conflict when you see the world where ZX8000 resides. When you’re in a confined space, running between platforms and even rooms, it mostly works out. I mean, I don’t love needing to traverse multiple screens for a speedrunner, but I get it. Yet when you break out of the expected mold and wind up someplace unexpected, you sort of take a turn. For example, you end up doing some horizontal shmup action at one point, which doesn’t truly lend itself to the overall concept, even if it makes sense in the game. Moreover, when you have to go swimming, the art of moving through water is a tried and true moment of slowing down players regardless of their previous endeavors, and this goes equally strong when you’re running against the clock.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, and it handles really well. The expected concept is to have tight controls, and I can honestly say that my hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths were not due to the game being poorly designed or the console not responding. If anything, I can see that this is a wonderfully atypical contender for a modern speedrunning title, and I think the inclusion of certain levels that demand you slow down (movable platforming stages, boss fights, etc.) is the only reason it hasn’t taken off in the community in a bigger way. These outliers, oddly enough, are a double-edged sword when it comes to the game’s enjoyment from any perspective.

On the one hand, I liked knowing that BZZZT had some stages where you were forced to work at a certain pace in order to accomplish things successfully, and it gave me a bit of schadenfreude knowing others had to move at my pace, even incredibly successful Twitch streamers who weren’t born when playing video games for a living was just a pipe dream to justify why I was bad at math. It’s a good balancing tool to help prevent this from just becoming another The End is Nigh or a similarly fast-paced title that had you hopping around and doing breakneck activities in a limited span of time.

On the other hand, the fact that these aforementioned slowdown stages still have a timer and an expected trophy line means that there’s the concept of being able to somehow cheat the system and get out in front of the automated doors or the deliberate release cycles and move a couple of milliseconds faster than you would normally expect. That kind of thing drives me crazy, like people trying to figure out glitches to win at Uno or something. It gave the impression of establishing rules, telling everyone to follow the rules, and then giving extra chocolate yummies to the people who broke the rules. Hey, I decided to piss in the fountain, do I get a Tim Tam? No? Only when I break the rules you imply I can break? This school has the stupidest honor code.

But, I must admit, once you lower the threshold for BZZZT and accept your own shortcomings, it really is a decent little title. It has a ton of replay value in terms of higher difficulties and golden trophy awards, but I’d rather get skull-sacked again than push myself to try and attain these lofty goals. No, BZZZT has charm and panache, and I was glad to try it in a greater capacity than the demo I played at BitSummit. But this is not the game for me, and I can accept that without condemning it as a bad game. It’s simply hard and a bit unorthodox. We’ve clearly seen that Fromsoft has made that their bread and butter, so why not a curious little robot as well?

 

Graphics: 9.0 Undeniably well-tuned graphics, the effort that went into making BZZZT look as clean and tight as it does cannot be understated. I am in love with how the game looks and it only loses a point because it’s not more pixelated, which is a classic case of doing your job so well you get yourself out of a job.	Gameplay: 6.5 While I don’t mind the shift from gameplay approach, I did very much mind when the expectations of speed and object gathering remained the same. A title so reliant on mad-tilt running has a lot of nerve injecting several stages that ask you to play a certain way, and then never bring it back again.
Sound: 10 It felt and sounded like a game Johnny Mnemonic should be playing between the scenes. Equal parts futuristic and cyberpunk, it’s a banger of a soundtrack that should not be ignored by anyone who has any appreciation for excellent ambiance.	Fun Factor: 6.0 I never quite got over busting myself down to the very easy difficulty, though it actually made the game both fun and attainable while still being shockingly hard. BZZZT takes no prisoners and you shouldn’t expect mercy if you plan to spend any time with this game whatsoever. If you like to bleed, strap in. If you don’t, you might want to find another robot with whom to party.
Final Verdict: 7.0

BZZZT is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of BZZZT was provided by the publisher.