Xbox

I used to love Robotech as a kid. I never truly understood it, partly because the story lines continued over a few weeks and I’d miss them as I used to play soccer on Saturdays, but more so because they were edited and dumbed down for a western audience. Characters loved, lusted, romanced, deceived, cross-dressed and even died, and most of this was watered down in order to make the series presentable to western kids used to Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. I’ve never properly revisited the Robotech universe, but after playing the game, it’s on my to-do list.

Robotech Invasion takes place in the 3rd series of the Robotech Saga, known as the New Generation. The Robotech Expeditionary force is on the other side of the galaxy when the aliens known as the Invid invade Earth to harvest protoculture from a flower only found on our home planet. Resistance forces rise up, and the Robotech Expeditionary force returns. You are part of that force, found unconscious on Earth and given a new identity, and new tools to fight the alien invaders.

It all sounds pretty exciting, but pretty quickly you realise that there’s not much to this game. Like the original series, it is dumbed down quite a degree, from the story to the gameplay. The story is more clichéd and contrived than anything the series could manage, even after the western censors took their axes to it. Although this maybe intentional, giving a nod to the series, it doesn’t quite work like that, leaving you feeling lost and confused on the whole.

The gameplay is pretty much your standard shooter fare. Point at this and shoot at that. It’s not too bad, but there’s nothing special here that hasn’t been done a million times before. When you get the upgrade to your armour that allows you to transform into a Cyclone, a two wheeled battle machine, things start looking up – until you try to control the thing. The Cyclone feels too light and floaty, and you can’t operate the thing indoors, even though the indoor areas are often bigger and less treacherous than the outdoor areas. Its weapons are a bunch of the cool squiggly rockets that have become a staple of Anime and Manga, but unfortunately they are too ineffective against the Invid and even human opponents.

Staying in human form is the best way to play this game, as you have better control and better guns. You can hold the left trigger and lock onto targets, which is a great little device, although it makes gun battles a little easier than they should be. Not that any of it is overly hard, the AI of the enemy is average – it focuses on you and simply shoots, and your teammates is even worse – they can’t seem to hit anything, but seem to get hit by everything.

The level design is probably the best aspect of the game. There’s enough variety in the game world to keep you interested for a few good hours. There are protection, search and rescue, and fetch and retrieve style missions, as well as blow up everything you see missions. There are a few ‘on rails’ missions to break up the action, which are also quite fun. The environments you fight in are quite varied too, but lack a certain level of detail that really shows after a while.

The graphics of the game are a let down too. There’s nothing shockingly bad about them, but again, there’s nothing great about them. The transformation from human to Cyclone is pretty cool, but other animations, such as explosions, gunfire and particle effects are fairly lack lustre. The sound is also just average, with the voice acting sounding like bad dubbing – which is perhaps intentional, but again, it doesn’t really work. Not even Jesper Kyd’s composition overly helps the game, unlike his compositions in the Hitman and Freedom Fighters games.

There is an online component, but every time I went online there were no players at all. This is getting to be quite a common thing for the lesser titles with Xbox Live! compatibility. Everyone plays the big release titles at release, and no one seems to want to play the smaller titles. In this case that’s probably not a bad thing, as the standard deathmatch, capture the flag, and capture & hold style games on offer nothing new to any seasoned gamer.

Overall, Robotech Invasion fails to impress on any level. Its lacklustre storyline, its been-there-done-that gameplay, its disappointing vehicle physics, and average graphics and sound all add up to an OK game, but one you couldn’t recommend over other titles that have been released recently. This is a shame, because the Robotech Universe is a very interesting universe, and has a lot of potential for greatness. The one good thing this game has made me want to do is revisit the cartoon, so I would only recommend this to devout fans of the series.