Gaming Target - Xbox: Robotech: Battlecry

Written by Leigh Culpin on April 18, 2002

First Impressions: Massive fighting machines, aliens, and cel-shaded goodness ? let's get it on!

It seems the age of cel-shading has now really dawned upon us: There's the obvious recent favorites such as Jet Set Radio Future, and there's more on the way, including a racer or two and a couple adventure games. This one, however, looks to be not just cool-looking, but could be one of the most sickeningly cool-playing games the Xbox has seen in a while. Its fast-paced arcade style, semi-original plot, and rather exciting game play mechanics show more potential then anything I've recently seen. All this, and you get to fly a ?Veritech? Fighter and shoot down an army of coolly named ?Zentraedi? soldiers!

A mission-based game, Battlecry throws you in the pilot seat of a multi-purpose fighting machine ? it's a jet, a mech, and a flying mech all in one!! There's a rather impressive environmental arsenal planned, with missions in populated cities, luscious mountains, and even some outer-space action. Despite being your somewhat basic shooter formula (i.e. missions being things like search-and-destroy, escort, guarding things, etc.), the game looks to be mindlessly fun. If you liked shooters like Serious Sam (or even if you didn't) this game has everything you need for hours of entertainment and then some. And I shouldn't necessarily say everything is entirely mindless, since you'll have to determine when the best time is to transform from, say, fighter mode to mech mode. Still, the basic shooting element is what I find most appealing.

Basically, the game takes its roots from the 1980's TV series. The story goes like this -- after the crash of a giant alien space ship, we humans spend ages learning their technology. Then (naturally) the aliens come looking for their little piece of property and a giant battle ensues. This is where you come in ? a fight to save planet earth! You'll end up flying, running and shooting your way through numerous levels of alien badassness. The real fun (I think) will be in the flying-mech style of play ? you've got the best parts of Air Force Delta Storm mixed with some MechAssault arcade-style fighting/flying. How can you beat that? Simple: You can't.