giant robots

Couldn't wait until I got Xbox Live to write this. The game and graphics are awesome. I didn't believe some of the reviews which indicated that the single player game is short. Well, it is! Thats too bad because anyone without Live who really wants a cool Mech game like this is out of luck. I finished it in a weekend. It's still fun but, at least they could have let you choose any Mech you wanted, to play from the beginning, after beating it. Thats my biggest gripe. I am getting Live next week and by what I have read it seems that that's where most of the fun is. If you don't have Live and won't have it anytime soon then I suggest renting this game first. You might just beat it and decide it's not worth keeping.

I got Live and it does make owning Mech Assault more worth the money. Multiplayer is a blst. I just hope there is a Mech Assault 2 because after replaying the single player mode I can see alot of things that could be added to make the game near perfect. Don't listen to any reviews here that totally bash this game. The graphics are outstanding for an Xbox game. There is no screeching noise when you walk. It's a BOOM, BOOM sound when you walk. And you do need to aim if you really want to bring down another Mech. If you love Mech games you need to at least rent it.

MechAssault is a solid game with great production values. Great sound, graphics and effects all around. I love the explosions in particular. It's missing so many elements that make a game great, though, that I don't think these people who write glowing reviews will be playing it a month from now.

Single Player
It's entertaining and well scripted. The difficulty level is about right, but the lack of mid-mission save points makes for a lot of frustration as you are forced to repeat a lengthy mission (which have some slow parts) if you're killed towards the end. For the record, I'm 3/4s through the campaign. It feels less like a Mech game and more like a pretty good first-person shooter.

Xbox Live
Many of the console owners are so happy to get online that they overlook a lot of flaws, hence the huge praise on live! There is a terrible lack of variety in gameplay on live! with two or three game modes, which all boils down to "kill the other guy". Just the "who" changes from one mode to another. For the most part, each game just turns out to be a circle-strafe fest.

Worse, the mechs are terribly imbalanced. There's virtually no reason to not choose a big mech with good defense and guided weapons, which boils the choices down to 4 or so of the 30+ mechs. It's no surprise that you see games full of Mad Cats and Ragnoraks. Also, the console controls make it neccessary for guided weapons to have a big role, and those guided weapons are so accurate that the speed advantage of smaller mechs is virtually meaningless. A Capture the Flag mode or a mech size cap in game setup would go a long ways to making smaller mechs more usable. Maybe there should be areas that only small mechs can get powerups. Dunno.

Finally, there's the chat aspect. Amazingly, you have to hold down a button to talk to your team, rather than broadcast your plans to your opponents. I'm considering rigging something to keep that button depressed during team games, but that's poor design. There's no time to keep your thumb down on a particular button in the game, so basically the only chat you hear is taunting. It turns out that I can only take so much of kids with odd accents hollering about this or that and trying to take obscenity to a new level of art (but failing). Trust me, you'll leave your headset off if you spend any real time online.

It's still good for a quick game and can be fun if you have several friends online, but it's just like the deathmatch mode of every other shooter in terms of longetivity. Enjoy it, but don't expect to get several weeks of fun gameplay out of it.

This game is as good as Halo when it comes to 3D first person shooter games. I think the story is excellent, you're a part of the Wolf Dragoons mercenary regiment and you're responsible for liberating a planet against murderous religious fanatics called the Word of Blake. Just the game I need, piloting giant heavily armed machines killing murderous religious fanatics!! I won't tell you the end because I don't want to spoil it!! Get it, its greater than Final Fantasy will ever be!!