"Looked pretty good, until you start to play it"

I love mech games. I love them to death. Mech commander, Mech warrior, Front mission, give me a great mech game and I'll play the heck out of it. Now, I rented this game to check it out, and returned it in 2 days. This will give you a general idea of my review.

You will get the feel of the game right from the start. The graphics are lackluster, in some cases cartoonish. When you play some of the other great mech games then come into this one, you will quickly see the difference. I had not even started playing the game when I knew the game wasn't going to be that great. Just watch the opening sequences and you will agree.

Basically I call this game a mech arcade fighting game, in a weird virtual world where you move about on a circuit in cyberspace visiting cyber shops and what not. Really ugly plain icky neon graphic cyber shops. There you can do most things in mech games. Purchace weapons, items, etc.

GRAPHICS: 6/10.

Nothing to write home about in this department. Many other mech games are just plain spectacular compared to this one. Like I said before, they have it as a action arcade mech game, so the graphics are designed to be colorful and outlandish. Lots of neons, etc. The fighting arenas are bland also, just stop and look around, the items are very blocky and the lines not good. Ugly. The mechs themselves aren't too bad, but then again you aren't going to see yourself much.

SOUND: 5/10

I turned the sound off in about a hour. Blaring annoying background music just was too much. Half the songs do not even go with the theme of the game. The sound effects of the weapons are ok, but again nothing outstanding. When you have played mech games with machine guns blasting away like chainsaws, the sounds of the guns in this one are more like firecrackers. Very weak. Half the time you can't even hear them because of the bad background music. Did I mention the background music sucks? At least you have the option to turn it off.

GAMEPLAY: 5/10

Oh boy, this is why I turned the game back in. The good part is that you can customize your buttons to what you like, but even with such good customizing options, the way the mechs handle still feel clunky and wild. You move with much more speed in this game than many other mech games. The enemy does also. Like I said before, its more of a arcade feel to it. Even with slow mechs, you move very fast paced. With the complicated controls this makes actually fighting very hard. Most of the game you feel more like hack and slash. You wait until you find a enemy mech, you try and chase it, and if it gets close to your sights you push buttons like mad hoping to hit something. Forget actually aiming. The speed at which you fight guarantees you won't be aiming at all, you'll face the enemy and attack, hoping he will still be in front of you. Most of the time, he isn't. So many times you will get a enemy in front of you and hit the weapons buttons, only to find you didn't point at him thus you'll fly by and miss, or he will simply not be there when you fire.

I think this is the worst part of the game, the fast pace. It makes tactics useless, it makes picking distance weapons useless (its hard to aim and hit up close, much less at a distance. The few arenas you fight in are small and tightly packed, thus again, not good for distance weapons.

Mech customizing is ok, but not really that great. There aren't a huge variety of weapons to choose from, and you can't interchange parts between certain mechs. Each mech type has a certain category of parts and thats it. You get a couple special items you can put on, but many of them are useless. Actual battles are not what you expect either. You play in "arena" battles. You are dropped into the arena, where you fight multiple opponents, killing certain ones can advance you to fight boss's. You can shoot a couple items in the arenas for extra points. Trouble is, if you die, you are out repair costs. But if you simply leave the arena before you die, you don't need any repairs except for your chips. Thus, the main goal of the fights are to kill enemies until you get low on life, then exit the arena. You don't get any special missions, you don't get any scouting missions, no rescue missions, no stealth missions. Its a arena fighting game.

REPLAY VALUE: I can't give a answer to this one, I didn't want to finish the game much less replay it. Sorry.

Overall, this game really didn't catch my attention at all. I love mech games, but this really didn't feel like a mech game to me, it felt like a generic arena battle game with your warrior just happening to look like a robot. I played it for a few days and it just didn't go anywhere. It was clunky, ugly, and ... well, boring. Rent it, don't buy it. You'll probably feel the same.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/16/06