Rock’em Sock’em Robots review

The hit toy from the 1960s gets the app treatment as you play either the Blue Bomber or Red Rocker robots battling it out in the ring. The aim of the game? “Knock his block off!”

First off, the look of the game is perfectly pitched – it’s bright and colourful and uses stylised versions of the two robots to good effect in menu screens and hint boxes.

Once you’ve made an arbitrary choice of robot (based purely upon your favourite colour), you can either dive straight into your first bout or opt to train up your ‘bot to give him a better chance of victory. We recommend the latter as our frantic mechanical flailing did nothing to postpone our first mauling in the ring.

The training section takes the form of four different minigames to increase your mechanical matador’s strength, stamina, style and defense. From practising hooks on a gas cylinder punchbag, to pounding our a rhythm one a set of traffic lights, these minigames are involving, but unfortunately they’re also the best part of the game.

Once you’ve put in the training and won your first bout, you quickly realise that the game is over. It’ll keep track of your win/loss record, but there’s no escalation in difficulty or  any sort of league format. At the end of a bout you have just two options – “menu” and “rematch”.

With a lack of incentives to keep playing it’s probably closer to the original toy than was intended. Great in theory, but destined for the loft the moment you crack open the box.