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A Solid 3D Shooter |  Arend D. Hart from Michigan says (11/Oct/2002): | So, I've been looking at the PS2 reader reviews and it seems like the hardcore Robotechies aren't that impressed with Robotech:Battlecry. However, as a gamer who is devoid of any prior Robotech knowledge, I really had a good time with the game.
Again I stress - going in, I knew very little about Robotech, and as for prior mech gaming, a few hours of Zone of the Enders was the extent. So, I went into Battlecry with an open mind, and it worked out pretty well for me.
At its heart, Robotech is a straight-up shooter. There is a story, but its really just there to link the shooter’s dozens of different scenarios together. Make no mistake, Vicious Cycle took the old side scrolling shooter game and put it in 3D, and did a pretty darn good job of it, too. Maybe this concept isn’t something new to the shooter fans out there, but to an Action/Adventure, Survival Horror fan like myself, it’s a nice change of pace from the usual fare. Granted, there is an ongoing story, but the story really isn’t all that important to the action, and it doesn’t really need to be as the action has enough authority to carry the game.
Let’s talk about the obvious. This game looks incredible. I mean, I know we’re all tired of hearing about all the cel-shading taking over the gaming world, but when you see it done well, there’s no denying that it’s extremely cool. Well, it only takes about three minutes to see that Vicious Cycle did a great job with the cel-shading in Battlecry. This game looks exactly like a cartoon. From the missile trailings, to the explosions, to the mechs themselves, this game is pristine. I’d have to say that the only game (for the PS2) with better cel-shaded visuals would have to be Sly Cooper, but that’s a whole different ballgame. Regardless, Battlecry is a beautiful game in its own right, and the developers deserve credit for their hard work.
As for the controls, it took a while to get used to the button layout, but once I did, it all seemed fairly natural. In all honesty, I would have preferred a more FPS-type dual analog layout (movement on left, aiming on right), but when I finally got the hang of the default layout, I didn’t really have much to gripe about.
So did I have any real issues with Battlecry? Sure I did. Do these issues taint the game? No, not really. But I should mention them anyway.
I guess my main issue was that in the heat of the battle, I sometimes became hopelessly disoriented. With all the explosions and other screen debris, it was sometimes difficult to figure out what exactly was going on. I actually watched an interview on G4tv in which the one of the VC developers was discussing Battlecry’s aim to be true to the cartoon; he made a point of mentioning the masses of rockets and explosions filling the screen and it sounded like it would be cool, and it is...but then again, it's pretty overwhelming when you're caught in the middle of it.
Other gripes? As the readers say, the missions are all quite repetitive, and because of that the game does become somewhat of a button masher after a while. I will give the developers credit for trying to give us our money’s worth with a bizillion missions, but it does seem to lose some excitement after a while.
Final gripe – I had some serious issues with the sound in certain parts. It seemed like something in the programming was a bit sensitive to button presses, and often I would find that somehow I had triggered the game to skip the spoken word parts of the in-game instructions. It would force me to have to look up the instructions in the log, which was a real pain.
All in all though, I really enjoy this game for what it is. A solid 3D shooter you can have a lot of fun with. Give it a try, and you just might find that you like it, too.
| Robotech: Battlecry - A long past due gem... | | Zor from Little Rock, AR says (18/Jan/2003): | The game is great. It has a good transformation sequence and dones't bog you down in mechanics of the Veritech, letting you fly and fight seemlessly like they do in the cartoon. The enemies are well rendered and your fighter actually looks like something our of the anime itself. All in all a MUST play for PS2 shooter game fans, and a MUST OWN for Robotech fans!
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