Counter point: I'm actually fine with kick in the current iteration. It seems more reliable to me than blocking and it's one of the first upgrades I pick up. Against a single enemy it's a pretty reliable way to disable and then jetpack/slice the other robot. It's significantly less helpful against multiple enemies, and several times I've kicked one robot only to be sliced by another robot while I'm still in the kick animation. It'd be nice if there was some way to make kick more useful against groups of enemies (maybe improve blocking accuracy while in the animation) but it'd also make sense to have to separate an enemy from the herd before kicking/killing them.