by:	December 27, 2004

Originally written by Mary Jane Irwin

It seems that no one ever grows tired of driving giant robots around and blowing stuff up. With this slew of gargantuan robots hitting the Xbox, Xbox owners will have a choice as to what sim they invest in. Gunmetal attempts to stay at the head of the pack offering destructible environments and the ability to transform from mech to fighter.

Gunmetal pits you against the enemy who is trying to destroy you and your civilization. Your main defense is a mech, codenamed the Havoc Suit, which allows you to patrol on foot or transform into a fighter jet.

Who or what the enemy is, or why you have a Havoc suit is left completely up to your imagination unless you take the time to read the manual (who actually does that?). Apparently you’re on an earthlike planet named Helios and you’re battling against a human faction that wants to either destroy you or merely take over your civilization. You may be able to extract from this that Gunmetal isn’t really about the story. The game opens with a small cinematic showing the Havoc suit marching out of bay doors, and then you’re on your own. That brief introduction was the first and last cut scene in Gun Metal, there is no attempt to further the meager plot development. Right from the start, Gunmetal offers up a rather bland experience. There are those diehard mech fans who won’t mind the lack of story, but there are those of us who appreciate having some motivation to blow up things (although that’s fun in itself). It just might be nice to know why these hordes of enemies are trying to destroy you. And, there are hordes. The enemy is miffed about something because they won’t retreat and seem to have an unlimited supply of forces, including troops, aircraft, and artillery, which makes your job of defending the home front a bit tough.

Luckily, you’re given quite the arsenal. Your little mech can transform into a fighter plane which is rather convenient, especially when you need to blast out of trouble to reenergize your suit. The only problem with this is the transformation is rather jerky. You could be running, hit the transform button, and 5 seconds later you’d jump into the air and hover until you completed the transformation. While you’re delayed, you can’t fire while the enemy has some target practice. Fortunately, when you finally finish the transformation you have some serious havoc wreaking weapons at your disposal. The mech is equipped from the start with missiles, machine guns and a flak gun. You can unlock torpedoes, and a weapon that shoots titanium discs at enemies. The fighter is equally well prepared with its own missiles, phoenix canons, guns, and tomahawk missiles.

It’s not all that hard to inflict damage upon the enemy thanks to some fairly good control, and the ability to completely customize the setup. The standard controls use the left thumb stick to move you around, while the right one allows you to look around (when a mech) or accelerate and brake (when a fighter). The right trigger is your selected weapon and the left trigger is your missiles. When you’re a mech, A cycles through weapons, X jumps, B enables auto lock-on, and y transforms you into the fighter. When you’re the fighter, A switches weapons, B barrel rolls you to the right, X spins you to the left, and Y will turn you back into a mech. The standard setup is fairly intuitive, although it takes some practice to get the hang of flying the fighter. But, if you have a problem, change it.

Gunmetal is broken down into a series of twelve missions. While the stage loads each mission briefing is read to you in a cheesy voice that attempts to tack importance onto what you’re doing. Unfortunately, the missions are all rather unimaginative and follow the style of most mission based games. Your options are defend, destroy, protect. They do not vary from this path, and unfortunately don’t link together to form a cohesive story. The main difference between the levels is that there are more enemies, more things to defend, and they just get harder to kill.

Your enemy AI, much like the missions, is predictable. All units of the same type will behave in the same manner. They won’t withdraw when taking a beating. The only reason that you will be able to out maneuver the enemy is because of sheer numbers. You would think that you would have some assistance defending your home from an evading force, but instead it’s you and your suit against hundreds of drones.

Once you defeat the opening missions, the difficulty increases exponentially. Again, this is not a function of smarter AI, but the fact that you are overwhelmed by forces. All strategy soon evaporates and your only chance is to madly blast everything in sight.

Graphics:
Gunmetal doesn’t look bad. Majesco put a lot of detail into the buildings, mech, and enemies. The problem is that the images seem rather recycled. None of the bases look like they have their own character, but rather they have been airlifted from one location to another. All the enemy units look the same (depending on type). In this same fashion, the scenery seems rather bland. But this is not the problematic part, the blandness, although it does detract from the game. Instead, the problem is that you don’t feel like a giant mech. It feels like you are normal size and everything is merely smaller than you are. Gunmetal just doesn’t provide the huge machine of mass destruction feeling. The fact that good collision detection is missing only makes it worse. When walking through the forests the trees will topple as you walk into them. This seems like a cool affect until you realize that the trees are flattening themselves before you actually reach them. That’s right; if you walk very slowly you will see a wave of trees collapse around you, without you actually touching them. If this doesn’t seem problematic, wait until you walk near animals. Just nearing creatures will cause them to explode into chunks of flesh and blood. It is possible that you emit some sort of pulse that causes stuff to explode (such as rocks that blast apart when you near them), but if it’s not mentioned in the operator’s manual, assume it’s not meant to be. This slight of hand keeps Gunmetal from immersing you in its world.

Sound:
Gunfire aplenty, Majesco does do a decent job with sound effects. It’s the repetitive musical score that will cause headaches, that and the narrator who gets really annoying. On a mission to destroy the enemy? Need to refuel your mech? Mission control will harass you endlessly until you’re back in range of enemies. It’s not as thought you’re abandoning the cause, it’s just at critical levels you need to refuel. The narrator’s preprogrammed lack of common sense will make you wish you could find headquarters and leave it a pile of rubble. The only redeeming feature in Gunmetal is the ability to substitute any play list on your hard drive for the theme music. You will still get the annoying barks of your commander and the sounds of gunfire, but instead of the score you can destroy things to your own tunes. Gunmetal is a completely different experience when you drive around in your mech listening to System of a Down, Disturbed, or “substitute favorite band here.”

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Gunmetal is definitely a rental. Don’t waste your hard earned cash on this mech sim unless you’re a diehard fan of all things wielding large amounts of destructive power. Gunmetal does offer some relatively addictive game play, but once you put down the controller it will remain cold and untouched if you can’t find ANYTHING else to put into the disc tray. I made it sound as though Gunmetal is a horrible game, which it’s not, but is sadly very very mediocre. It gets boring quickly and lacks difficulty settings or multiplayer so has very limited replayability. Majesco just didn’t push the Xbox with this title and with so many quality games on the black box Gunmetal surely doesn’t shine. Heed my warning. Robotech and Steel Battalion will soon be gracing our console; there is no reason to waste time on this drivel.

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