Robbery Bob

''Robbery Bob: Man of Steal'' (a pun on '' man of steel'', an epithet associated with Superman, and also known by the subtitle ''King of Sneak'') is a 2012 stealth action game developed by Swedish studio Level Eight and originally published by Chillingo. In the game, the player controls a robber named Bob and must sneak around houses to complete missions. The game was released for iOS on May 3, 2012, and has been met with a mixed reception for its gameplay and art quality.

Gameplay and release

Throughout 50 levels, the player controls Bob, the titular player character, from a top-down perspective. Bob must sneak around houses and steal items without being caught. Enemies, including police officers, dogs, and family members, will roam around the house. Bob can put on disguises, hide, change the enemies' direction, and make distractions. The player can run, but it will lure enemies towards them. The level ends once they are out of the house, and stars grade the player's performance based on speed and accuracy. On May 3, 2012, Chillingo released ''Robbery Bob'' for iOS.

Plot

Bob is seen sitting in jail doing nothing, until "Strange Dealer " appears in his window
helping him get out of jail by smashing the window, then the Strange Dealer says that Bob has to return the favor by stealing items from different houses and buildings.

Later, he's calm down downtown when he runs into "Biff" and Bob, when he runs into him, ruined his ice cream, gets grabbed by him and then used to commit robberies for him, and then Bob himself enters Biff's apartment and sees the police in it, and when Biff arrives he starts beating up all these officers, and Bob, knowing that if they see him he's done for, steals everything he can and escapes.

Then, he goes to a desert believing it is a safe sanctuary but Dr. Thievius catches him and makes him steal several components for many devices, but in one of those robberies, this Dr. accidentally tells him of a secret exit that Bob takes, while all this happens, the Dr. is begging him to come back and trying to blackmail him, and when Bob is going to escape, he activates the self-destruct system of the laboratory in which they had him, he manages to escape and the explosion blows the Dr. into the air.

Reception and sequel

The game has a "mixed or average" score on Metacritic.

The gameplay was received poorly. In a ''TouchArcade'' review, Brendan Saricks felt that the game's sneaking mechanic went from "real strong" to "a repetitive room-by-room hunt". Saricks compared ''Robbery Bob'' to the 2011 video game ''The Last Rocket'', criticizing that the game mechanics did not go together and that the gameplay was luck-based. James Nouch of ''Pocket Gamer'' thought the controls were "clumsy", while AJ Dellinger of ''Gamezebo'' thought they were "pretty fluid". Although he thought the dialogue was "cringeworthy", Dellinger found that the story was "intense", writing about the crimes Bob commits in the game.

''Robbery Bob'' art style was met with criticism. Luke Larsen of ''Paste'' magazine described it as "tacky", presented through "cartoonish antics" and "forgettable characters". Dellinger said the graphics mostly consisted of smoothed "pixels from the '90s", and he stated that the plants were "drawings from kindergarteners".

A sequel, titled ''Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble'', was released on June 3, 2015. ''TouchArcade'' rated it four out of five stars, with reviewer Chris Carter praising it for filling a niche for heist games and focusing on stealth over action while criticizing the story’s premise as "stupid" and the art design as "forgettable".

References

External links

* {{MobyGames, /83698/robbery-bob-man-of-steal/

2012 video games
Action games
Android (operating system) games
TvOS games
Chillingo games
Fiction about robbery
IOS games
Stealth video games
Video games about crime
Video games developed in Sweden
Windows games