Robotech Battlecry Impressions
You know the feeling you got, if you played it, when you first played the recent spiderman game on the rooftop level where you were tossing thugs around and thought the game would be a blast, little realizing this was the best moment in the whole game? Well, Robotech actually makes me nostalgic for Spider-man.
The first flying level seems fun until you realize that most of the other flying levels are identical and they have a big problem (stolen from M3 and previous macross games) is that the background doesn't move so you never get the feeling of movement when you're flying. You feel like you're stuck in place, with sucks the fun right out of that. The very first Wing Commander game gave a sense of flying. This can't be that hard to emulate.
Then the first ground level also seems fun at first, that is until you try to circle strafe an enemy so you can actually shoot them without getting hit and you realize because of the boneheaded idea of not giving you control of the camera (which they could have easily done), you can't possibly see what you're circling. In fact, you find out later that the best way to kill an enemy without taking damage is to not actually see them. Did I mention the sniper mode is totally useless for normal battles? Well, it is.
I've played through over a dozen missions since then and the first two missions have been the best of the lot. This game has 'underachiever' written all over it. It's like the devs were so focused on making it somewhat authetic (though they forgot a number of things) that they forgot about making it fun.
It also steals a lot of concepts from the dreamcast game Macross M3. From how the missle ammo works (even how it's displayed on the screen), to how it turns you into robot mode if you fly within 10 miles of a canyon wall, to even how the pre-mission cinema stuff is done. I guess it's little things mostly so perhaps I'm being too harsh, but Battlecry really doesn't bring anything new or exciting to the table.
Okay, maybe I should think more positively. The mecha and Zentradi are perfectly animated and just look great, even up close. I don't know how they could possible be better. Even the smallest animation seems to be just right. The backgrounds don't look as good, but eh, they do the job for the most part. The canyons were positively bland and uniform though.
The flying missions are quite fun, even though it feels like you're stuck in place the whole time, tracking ships with your missiles and guns is cool, and taking out a large scout ship would have been perfect if not for a few minor details, like the infinitely respawning attack fighters and again the stationary background.
Ground fighting at a distance is usually fun in battloid mode, though guardian mode is odd and takes a little getting used to. The problem is you can't fire missles in battloid mode, which makes sense but cuts your firepower in half, so you won't want to be in this mode much even though it controls really well.
Oh, the music is really, really bad. I wish there could have been custom soundtrack so I could pop in the Macross Plus soundtrack, but no option for it.
Any questions, ask. There's probably a lot more I'm forgetting.
