Beer Byte - Awesomenauts

A jet pack flying, laser firing monkey? Someone has been reading my diary, that's if I was a 12 year old girl who kept a diary that's exactly what would be in it.

Awesomenauts starts off like some amazing 80-90s Sci-fi cartoon throwback, with an amazing theme tune to boot (see the inspiration here, here, and here) and offers some ace visuals along with something different to the console multiplayer arena. 

It's a MOBA (Multiplayer online battle arena) game,  a PC genre made popular with games like Defence of the Ancients, a game which unfortunately I've never had the chance to play as my PC is probably old enough to still remember dial-up internet.  

The premise is simple, you and your compardres level up your characters to take on the other opponents base, usually with the aim to destroy one key structure to succeed.  Awesomenauts takes this concept, shoves it through some intergalactic wormhole which has a cyborg zoo on the way and spits it into a side scrolling medium. 

The first thing I discovered in the game is that I was either ridiculously rubbish at it, or it was a bit hard. It was a combination of the former and something else, I was playing it wrong.  The general premise for most multiplayer games on the Xbox is a gung-ho one, get a big gun and shoot the crap out of everyone.  Doing this in Awesomenauts will mean you will die, a lot, and it will also mean the other team obtain solar, can upgrade quicker, storm your base and ultimately be victorious. 

Taking your time, retreating when low on energy and killing the little droids that come your way is the best tactic to upgrade quickly and gain the upper hand. Once you get the hang of this you can quickly get hooked. And as many other reviews have commented - playing online against real players is the most fun, the bot matches once you nail down the tactics can get a little repetitive. The human dynamic really adds to the enjoyability of this game and will be ace with a few mates round for a beer or two. 

This game is a huge barrel of space monkey laughs with great visuals and addictive gameplay, as soon as you've got the hang of it. And believe me I recommend you get the hang of it because who doesn't want to be a flying monkey with a laser, or a lizard future ninja thing, am I right?

Beer byte - Every review I'll be putting a beer that matches the game either in terms of style, gameplay or maybe if I struggle with that I'm just going to give you a beer that I love and you should try! 

This week I recommend Well's Banana Bread Beer - that's right I've been chatting about monkeys so a banana related beer is the weak link I'm going for, deal with it.  A tasty beer that really does taste like it smells, rich sweet caramel banoffee flavours which goes down well while you're firing your laser beam at a caped floating brain in a jar.