I wanted to like this game. I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. But sadly, my eternal nemesis known as "Bullshit Physics" ruined the enjoyment.
As you may be aware of already,
I have a certain attraction towards combatative robotics. When I first heard of the UK television show "Robot Wars", I took one look at the title and jumped in the air with my fist raised so high it grazed a blimp. Unfortunately, it was some time before I got to see it for myself, but when I did, I was not disappointed.
The majesty! The Destruction! The Art!
Needless to say, I was hooked.
But this review is not about the TV show, this review is about the second game to be made about the series "Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction".
I played a fair bit of the previous game "Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction" several years ago, and found it enjoyable, but not really true to the spirit of the show. Unfortunately, Extreme Destruction takes everything irritating about the first game, and makes it infuriating. But enough general rambling, let's get onto the actual review.
(For the PC)
Game play:
Well, the game play itself is great (in theory). The game offers a variety of game modes such as annihilator (Last one standing) Capture the Flag (which is more like oddball) and Sumo Basho. There's a couple more bizarre game modes, such as Mad Bomber, where a robot is randomly chosen to have a bomb which goes off every minute and destroys the robot holding it. You've got to transfer the bomb to another bot by attacking it to avoid becoming toast. There's also Collateral Damage, but I'm yet to figure out how it actually differs from Annihilation.
The other major component (ha ha ha) of the game is the construction and career of your very own Fightin' 'Bots. This isn't Garry's Mod, so your control over what your scrapper looks like is limited to "Component A goes into slot B on chassis C" but nevertheless, there's a wide array of components to choose from (more being unlocked as you win more competitions) and enough chassis to cover most of the designs commonly found in the TV series. If you're like me and like the building, then you can sell your robot and start anew for each tournament. You get a full refund for every component, so it's never a case "I didn't want to buy this hammer and now I'm stuck with it". Personally, I like to think of it more as melting down your robot and reforging it as a brand new killing machine, but that's just me.
I call this one: "Mr Pointy"
My eyes! My eyes!
Graphics:
Game was made in 2002, so nothing fancy by today's standards. However, it does show
significant improvement over its predecessor. Armour will buckle and tear, as opposed to going straight from pristine condition to leaping off your shell like rats from a burning steamboat. I did have some issues with artifacts blocking off some parts of the screen on the New York Subway level, but you can't really blame the game for it. After all, I'm running this on Vista (as opposed to Windows 2000) with DirectX10 (as opposed to DirectX 8) and an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (as opposed to a toaster with a calculator stuck in the grill).
Sound:
It sucks. It sucks the suckage most foul.
As much as I like Craig Charles as an actor and a compare, the in-game narration will grind your nerves into a fine powder and snort them. Though a few more lines have been added for the new weapons and arena hazards, you can still hear and grow sick of them all within a couple of hours of play time. The actual music is a bland techno blarping which doesn't suit the action in the slightest. Mute it and stick with your media player of choice. I can't really think of an appropriate image to stick with this paragraph, so I suppose I'll need to do some googli- WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT!?
WHERE ARE THE CONTROL
OPTIONS!?!?
Interaction: Fairly simple affair. Arrow keys for directional movement, right shift and control for your two weapons. Unfortunately, there's no way to actually change the keybinds, so if hitting shift will result in the Stickykeys Popup of Doom for you, this will only add another layer of frustration. The User Interface has a very fitting robotic theme, with menus and dialogue windows popping up in a mechanical manner with appropriate whirring and buzzing sounds. The bad thing about this is that it can make navigating to different menus tiresome and lengthy. It has a very "ripped from console" feel, everything is geared (tee hee hee) towards a D-pad and A + B buttons control setup. So if I want to place a spike on the rear of my robot, I must select "Add component > Weapon > Spikes > Solid Spike" then I must use the left and right mouse keys to cycle through the list of valid slots then click the Select button to place the spike. This entire process must be gone through for each individual component as it returns you to the menu every single time you select any component is added or removed. The only exclusion is for wheels and drive motors, which can be added in lots up to 6 in one go. (But they still have to be removed individually.)
Furthermore, clicking the mouse on the text of an item won't select it, you have to click on the green light to the left of each option. And while I'm picking on the user interface: HOW BIG OF A CURSOR DOES ONE NEED!?
Honestly, it is literally as big as 24 of the normal microsoft cursors! This game must have been made by persians because that arrow is definitely big enough to block out the sun.
