Review by: Jason McMaster

As a Spyborg, which is a group of superheroes with cybernetic implants, you’ve recently been betrayed by a former team member, Jackal. After waking up from a prolonged lapse of consciousness, you discover your base is under attack and only you and your two partners can stop the assault by beating up wave upon wave of bad guys.

Taking control of one of the characters is a relatively un-waggly experience for a Wii game, and to that end I want to thank Capcom. Unlike many Wii games, the temptation to make you flail around like a complete idiot was resisted by Bionic Games, only really requiring a couple of different motions to play successfully. Once those basic motions are covered, Spyborgs plays as you’d imagine: normal attack, strong attack, block and jump. These are your starting moves. Additional moves can be unlocked using the experience you accrue throughout the levels, but for the most part the formula stays the same. Punching, stabbing and shooting every enemy that gets into your path can be fun, but the hook for the action is the two player special combos.

Each enemy and a large portion of the crates in Spyborgs will drop power pellets for your special meter. Once it’s full, you can unleash a powerful tag-team attack on a single unit. Each player is responsible for hitting their part of the move - otherwise it fails - in time to damage your foe. These attacks can be life-saving, without a doubt, but require a bit of Wii-mote-waggle and will innately irritate some players. Notably, among the players that it irritates is me, because I’m about 50/50 on nailing those moves, even though I have performed the required action.

Spyborgs is hard. I’m not saying that because it has constantly kicked me in the face. I’m saying that because the game is actually difficult and I’m not sure why the checkpoint system doesn’t make up for that. Ah, right, there is no checkpoint system. The idea, I believe, was to make small enough stages so that checkpoints would not be necessary; however, they’re often not small enough. No matter how close to the end of a level you may be, if you die, you start back at the beginning. The game’s wave after wave of enemies can be a bit daunting. Alternately, you can also refer to it as “frustrating” and “I’m so angry I just threw my Wii-mote into the sun,” when trying to describe the level of difficulty that can arise from certain fights.