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Vicious Cycle returns with a sequel to the much-loved Robotech franchise. Two years ago, the folks at Vicious Cycle and TDK released Robotech: Battlecry, a game that we rated a 9.0. Since Take-Two purchased TDK, Vicious Cycles’ latest game is being released through the Global Star brand. The game is quite different to Battlecry’s mostly aerial action and notably drops the cel-shaded look that worked so well for the game.
In Robotech: Invasion, players control Locke, a member of the Robotech Expeditionary Forces, who has no memory of his life but joins the resistance anyway. Along the game, he’ll receive flashbacks of his past life, which reveals a bit more about the character. The game takes place in Robotech’s New Generation saga, with Scott Bernard’s resistance fighting off hordes of an evil Alien race called the Invid in an attempt to get rid off them but more important survive. The story is passable, although Robotech fans will surely get more out of it than the average gamer.
The game’s missions are pretty standard for shooters. There are many move-along-and-destroy-everything-in-your-path missions, but these are complimented by on-rail missions and some light escort-like missions, as well. Invasion allows you to play in either the third-person or first-person perspective, and the game’s targeting system is nearly flawless and is one of its best aspects. It allows you to target an enemy, which is then followed, allowing you to attack it but it adds depth to the whole thing by allowing you to aim within a specified area to attack the Invid enemies where it hurts them the most: their eye. If that isn’t your thing, you can always use standard first-person shooter-like controls to get the work done.
You won’t always be playing as a mech as you can switch to a motorcycle to quicken your speed and get away from an area quickly. With Invasion’s large environments, this is certainly helpful. Controlling the cycles isn’t as natural as the other controls in the game but they aren’t bad, and as I mentioned, is pretty important in certain cases.
The rather short, six-eight hours-lasting single-player mode is augmented by fully functional Xbox Live support. Online multiplayer allows you to play in the standard, “must have” modes of a shooter: Deathmatch (and its team-based counterpart) and Capture the Flag, but also Protocapture. In the Protocapture, you and your team will be tasked with protecting a Proto Extractor which allows you to gain a certain amount of a resource, which you’ll need to win the game. As expected, the other team must stop you from doing this while protecting their own Proto Extractors.
The actual multiplayer is enjoyable, but finding a game to play isn’t. I’ve logged on at different times throughout the day and you’ll be lucky to find a handful of games and most of the time you’ll find but one or two and the game was released a bit over a week ago. While it should get better, it is still something to keep in mind when adding multiplayer into the game’s replayability.
The game’s visuals are on the average side. You’ll find many, large environments in the game which are all unique enough and rather cohesive, as the game doesn’t load much from level to level. Nonetheless, you can tell that the engine perhaps wasn’t designed for the game’s full-on 3D gameplay as the environments are made up of relatively simple architecture for a third-year Xbox title. The texture quality helps this out a bit, but overall Robotech: Invasion never becomes more than an average-looking game.
The game’s audio is pretty good, though. You’ll find the Robotech themes of yore but also new stuff from much-hyped composer Jesper Kyd. The new themes fit right in with the old ones and definitely fit in to the whole Robotech universe. The game’s sound effects are standard, nothing commendable but nothing lamentable, either. The voice acting fares about the same, although Guppy is rather annoying.
When it is all said and done, Robotech: Invasion is a good game that fans of the series will surely enjoy. However, it doesn’t do anything too different and although the cycles are nice, I felt that the Veritechs of the previous game were much more fun to mess around with. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Oct 14, 2004
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