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Robotech: Invasion Review - Xbox

Developer Vicious Cycle's Robotech: Battlecry was met with reasonable success - the game wasn't too bad, but didn't manage to touch the kings of the genre such as the similar Halo. But can the game's sequel achieve this? Unfortunately not.

Robotech: Invasion takes place within the complex universe that the series is set within. There are numerous histories and backgrounds to the game's storyline, but in short, your goal is to wipe out an army of aliens that has invaded and completely taken over Earth. You're part of a large squad of soldiers, similar to Transformers, named Robotechs, clad in armour and able to transform into vehicles on command.

The game is both a First-Person Shooter and a Third-Person Shooter - tapping Up on the D-Pad switches between the two viewpoints, allowing those who prefer the first-person perspective to play that way, and those who prefer the third-person perspective to play that way. Controlling your character, Locke, is easy; he moves fluidly and comes with various functions. Not only can he jump, walk and run, he can use his boosters to perform double jumps in order to reach distant locations. A tap of the Y button will see the game switch to a third-person view and Locke transform seamlessly and immediately into a motorbike-like vehicle called a Cyclone, though you can only perform this action in the game's large, open areas, which make up a decent portion of the game. Some areas, though, such as the wide, tall tunnels found primarily at the beginning of the game, must be walked through despite the fact that they are entirely marked roads. This becomes fairly frustrating as you'll often spend a long time staring down tunnels, wondering when the exit is going to appear. Overall the game's environments are very unimaginative and bland with little to no exciting events happening within the game world. Back onto the Cyclone, though, even worse than the limited areas that you can use the Cyclone in is the unpractical nature of Locke's vehicle form. The open areas often have debris and the like scattered across them, and crashing into them or driving over them will result in a crash and, subsequently, the change back into your original form. Due to this you'll quickly find it more efficient, ironically, to move through such areas on foot.

The weapons in the game look fairly futuristic, using both plasma-type fire as well as bullets - think Halo, but worse in terms of design and efficiency. You'll come across automatic, semi-automatic and explosive weapons, some in each class functioning differently to others - you'll find that some are more effective against large enemies, such as the hulking Invid aliens, while some are more effective against the smaller ones such as the pesky flying Invids that hover above you. The game features a fairly innovative targeting system to make firing easier and catering to two styles of play. You're able to take on your enemies manually, simply using (continued next page)