There have been games based after popular anime cartoons, books, and
movies since as far back as gaming goes. The quality of these games,
however, is often questionable. While a few games may exceed
expectations and live up to the hype of the show, often these games
fall short. This often results in the same fan base buying the games,
the fan base of the show for which it revolves around. You’ve seen it
happen with .hack, you’ve seen it happen with many of the endless
stream of Dragonball Z games, and more often that not you’ll see it
happen again with Robotech.
While quality gameplay is provided, it’s often hindered by
repetition. Robotech is an action game in which you pilot what is a
gundam like vehicle known as a “Veritech”. These Veritechs possess the
unique ability to transform into one of three forms: Guardian,
Battloid, and Fighter. Each mode is equipped by with a special feature,
the Guardian can pick up items, the Battloid can snipe, and the Fighter
can launch decoys to distract enemy missiles. Seeing as you can switch
between each of these modes at any moment, each mission is free to be
tackled as you see fit, mostly. You see, this game can essentially be
broken down into 2 types of levels, urban and flight. In urban missions
you patrol the streets fighting, and in flight you often don fighter
mode and take to the skies. The catch is, fighter mode is useless in
urban missions, and vice versa. Another thing I don’t believe the game
paid attention to very closely is the weapon heat. You cannot fire your
gun for too long or it overheats. Unfortunately, many of you will
discover this can easily be overcome by simply tapping the button.
Also, many of the missions require you to escort something to a certain
location relatively unharmed. This can become both tedious and
frustrating as you play level after level protecting a “cat’s eye” or
“destroid”. While many of these flaws can be overlooked, they do hinder
the overall experience of the game.
The plot in Robotech is a fairly basic concept. Aliens attack your
planet, you must try and defend it, and while I’m not familiar with the
show, I can assure you that fact really doesn’t hinder from being able
to fully understand the plot. The voice acting is done alright, and you
see basic anime pictures with accompanying voices after each chapter,
which is mainly how they carry the plot. The plot has quite the number
of twists, and often was my only encouragement to bear another level of
protecting something. Given the circumstances, Robotech delivers a
quality story without requiring any back knowledge of the show.
The controls, on the other hand, are something that needs to be
brought up. The controls will take a while after the training to grow
accustomed to, and often confuse during critical moments. You move with
the left thumbstick, boost with A, and strafe with L and R. All three
of these buttons must be used together, successfully, to move with ease
and dodge enemy fire. While this may sound simple, it can often times
get to be quite the hassle. X is for primary fire, B shoots secondary
fire, and Y is for your forms special ability. Another problem arises,
however, with the controls for switching targets. You will have to do
this almost constantly, yet the game sets these controls to the black
and white buttons. This may not seem like an issue on the Controller S,
but on the old school controllers, you actually need to move your hand
a bit to hit one of these buttons. Managing this and the movement
controls at the same time can really become annoying at times. I often
found I could manage the controls alright as long as I didn’t think
about it; you kinda have to wait until they become second nature to
you. This shouldn’t be the case though, and hinders gameplay often.
The sound in this game isn’t worth writing home to mom about, is
certainly better than some games around. Robotech has a very basic
soundtrack, music that usually fits the mood and setting, and the main
theme is actually quite encouraging. The only problem with the sound is
the sound effects. Not the actual in game effects like explosions,
those are fine. The problem comes from the noises Jack (the main
character) makes whenever you kill an enemy. You have no idea how many
times you’ll hear cheesy one liners such as “come back when you have
some skill”, “I just took those guys to school”, or my personal
favorite “Jack the giant killer!”. These seem entertaining at first,
but before long you’ll find yourself turning down your volume, or not
defeating enemies, whichever you find easiest.
This game can be replayed, though considering it is fairly long
and most missions are the same, im skeptical any of you may want to do
this however. The only saving grace is that through playing the game
more than once you can unlock certain medals based on criteria you meet
in the game, such as defeating a set number of a specific type of
enemy. These medals unlock you new Veritech models for both use in
single and multiplayer mode, paint coats, and movies. The multiplayer
is enough to get you by if you’re bored with a friend, but the main
focus of this game really is the single player.
The graphics are very routine graphics, with the characters in a
cel shaded fashion. You will often see the same texture, or rather,
what appears to the same level, used over again. This can get old,
especially after struggling on the same mission for 20 tries. Not much
can be said about Robotech’s graphics, and whether that is good or bad
remains up to question.
Robotech is on most scales an average game, one that will provide
fair amounts of entertainment, but certainly won’t stick out as
anything fantastic. Fans of the series should pick it up, as for the
rest of you, renting should get you by just fine.
