I loved Worms on the PS1, I haven't played any since then, but this
reminds me of Worms for the most part. The only difference is Worms was
fun, and had a ton of weapons to use against your enemies. This game
lacks both of those.
Future Tactics is really really hard. They made it this hard to
make it feel longer than it really is, this game would be alot shorter
if you could beat a level without dying 20 times before getting enough
strength to finally win and move on to the next stage (and die 20 more
times) and so on. The enemies in this game are way to strong and smart,
and they can attack you from anywhere.
The sound and graphics are slightly below average. There's no
replay value, except for multiplayer. You can unlock new things during
single player though. It's no Worms, so don't even bother putting a
friend through this. This is one of the most ridiculous games I have
ever played.
----------Battle System----------
Future Tactics is a turn-based strategy RPG. The turns move in
rounds, so the game will either start with your team or the enemies
first depending on the chapter. Once it's your turn you can move which
ever character you want in any order. At the start of your move you get
to pick between Run, Attack or End Turn. If you choose to Run you get
to run in a full 3D area with a green barrier showing your limits. You
can jump on rocks or just about anything aslong as your character can
jump high enough to gain ground on an enemy. After you find your spot
you can then choose to Attack. Attacking is different depending on the
character, you can even get new attacks by getting the power up
tablets. Most characters though have the "scope" attack, this attack
turns you into a sniper, then you have to line up horizontal bar with a
vertical bar to form a cross. If you get the cross inside of the middle
of the scope, then the more powerful your attack will be. If you hit
the enemy with a headshot, then you get an even more powerful attack.
The other attack in the game is a rocket style attack, you go into a
"radar" mode. Your goal in this attack is to stop a circle that is
going in and out of the "radar" screen to stop on an enemy, then stop a
spinning dial on the enemy again to hit your target. This move can
attack more enemies at once, but it's weak. The only other attack is a
melee attack everyone has, if you are close enough to an enemy, then
you can run up to hit and smack him. This is useful if you're on a
bridge or near water and you can knock the enemy off of the map.
When you're done running and attacking, you then have to "End
Turn". When you select this you get to choose from three options, Rest,
Shield or Heal. Shield will protect you from attacks in the next
rounds, Heal will heal your HP by a small margin, but both of these are
limited. Rest just ends your turn.
Hidden inside the stages are power up tablets. These things will
give your characters new abilities. You can max out a character to 6
power ups, but you can't use them until you get to a certain level (and
leveling up takes forever in this game). Power Ups can be very
important, for instance, you can get one that makes your character
attack twice within one turn, or a power booster.
You gain experience for every successful hit, but if you attack
lower level enemies you won't gain much experience. Gaining levels is
extremely important and needed to beat this game, however, it takes way
to long to gain levels in this game so it's completely frustrating.
The game offers different goals for each chapter atleast. Some
stages you have to kill the boss, others you have to get all your
characters from point a to point b. You have to protect things in
babysitting missions, and so on.
The game has an extreme difficulty level with no ability to change
it. The enemies are very intelligent, so they'll directly pick on one
character and kill him within a couple hits. If one of your teammates
die during battle then you have to start the level over again (although
down the line you'll gain "Immortality" for some stages). The
developers counter this by allowing you to keep the power ups,
experience and levels you gain during the last battle. Even with this
added to the game, it's still way to hard and frustrating for anyone to
play to enjoy.
----------Characters / Story----------
The character's are lame, the story is even lamer (is that a
word?). There really wasn't a bunch of thought put into this game, and
you can mostly tell in the storylines. The story felt rushed and poorly
edited into short jump cutscenes before and after a battle. Sometimes
during battle you'll get a few dialog scenes and that's nice, but it
doesn't really make me care about any of the characters at all. Most of
the story just doesn't make sense at all.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are a few years behind the curve, but I enjoyed the
look of the character and enemy models. The characters are slightly
better looking (graphically, not artistically) than Timesplitters 2.
The environments aren't very big and there's only 19 chapters, so it's
not a big game at all. The explosions are pretty weak and there's
really nothing to exciting about attacks. You can destroy just about
anything in the game though. Not the most exciting game in terms of
graphics.
----------Sound----------
The character's are all voiced out in dialog scenes and even have
a few lines in battle. The voice actors are all English and takes a bit
of time to get use to. The biggest problem I had with the voices is
they're poorly acted. The production quality of the voices are
substandard, because you can't even hear them have of the time, either
the actor mummbles the lines or the sound is quiet to the point of
mute. The music is generic "heavy metal" guitar riffs and otehr wise
boring generic sounding tracks scattered across the game. The music
changes when the enemies have their turns, so I guess that's about the
best thing I can say about that. Otherwise, the music is pretty bad.
----------World Map----------
The game flows in chapters in a linear fashion, there's no turning
back or anything at all, so go with the flow. The chapters just feature
one stage and that's it (with one exception). The stages start your
characters in a pre-determined part of the map, with the enemies on the
other side of it then you duke it out.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
There's no time given after completion or during the game. My guess is about a 20-30 hour game.
