adventure

An outstanding Third Person Shooter with excellent graphics, sound , and gameplay! It truly feels like playing a light-hearted version of HALO, complete with awesome vehicle use and melee attacks! Also it has a great story with excellent voice work.

I try very hard to take shooters on their own merits, but the similarites to HALO are uncanny. This game is chalked full of spastic running and gunning against various butt-kicking, smart enemy A.I. that works together well. But don't worry because you'll have help from friendly A.I. fighting beside you. However you must either keep yourself as a fast moving target or use the cover provided by the large, beautiful levels (or maybe alittle of both) to stay alive. The vehicles are original and handle well. This is a very challenging and entertaining shooter. The multi-player format (like HALO) provides for hours of replay. For it's bargain price you really don't have a good reason to, at the very least, not rent or buy this game. Metal Arms is one of the most enjoyable shooters I have ever played!

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System has to be one of the best shooters around. Its got brutal fighting with lots of varied levels and gameplay, making this one of the most unique and fun games I've ever played. It has a large arsenal of great weapons and they're all upgradeable so they change throughout the game. Each class of enemy robots have their own weaknesses, so you can switch guns in mid battle to make sure you have the most efficient killing machine on hand for the next group of bots making their way over to attack you. Sometimes you'll find yourself quickly backing away to keep your distance from a charging, slashing, shrieking enemy while you switch over to a better weapon and reaload it before blasting the crazy dinosaur-animal bot to pieces. These quick monsters attack anything in sight, even other enemy robots, and only add to the already ferocious and frantic mechanical slaughter in this game.

Metal Arms is tough all-out warfare with heavy machine guns blasting, missles whizzing by, and robots exploding with limbs and parts thrown everywhere. But it's also smart and tactical with special grenades that have various effects, the tether enemy takeover weapon, and long range scoped sniper weapons, it just depends on how you play it. There are so many options to killing these bots it's crazy. Robot torture is my favorite. You can shoot a saw blade at an enemy's gun arm and make it totally unable to protect itself, with the useless weapon just hanging there and twisting around firing at the ground as the defenseless bot itself is screaming in panic because it can see you switching to the shotgun and aiming at its head. Maybe it's wrong to treat these poor little guys like this, but I don't care this is the coolest video game I've played in years.

I caught this one at the discount bin at work, and figured I'd give it a try. Even if it proved to be disappointing, it wasn't like I was dropping fifty bucks on it. Well, it would have been worth fifty (or more).

This is one of the best titles I've ever played for the Xbox (or any other system). It has great action, incredible gameplay, and some truly innovative ideas. The story is pretty simple: You're Glitch, a re-assembled mining robot who's out to save his fellow robots from the nefarious schemes of General Corrosive and his legions of evil Mil bots. This game is basically a combination of a third-person shooter (with a trouble-free camera setup, a definite plus) and a platformer. It's mission-based: Go from point A to point B, kill anything that gets in your way, go to the next level. That's par for the course with most platformers. What makes this game stand out, however, is intense action and the unique elements incorporated into its gameplay. You can hijack enemy robots either through terminals scattered about the game (looking much like arcade consoles) or using a control tether (awarded about halfway through the game). Sometimes this is required in order to advance; there are some security checkpoints that only enemy bots can pass. Other times, you're allowed to just wreak havoc; at one point, you control a giant Titan robot, a "weapon of mass destruction" if there ever was one. If you're careful, you can sneak up on an enemy, hijack him, and have him take out a number of enemies before he's destroyed (or goes out of range). Another way to take control of an enemy is to use a Recruitment Grenade. Use that, and he'll fight for you until he's dead or you release him.

--A tip: When you're finished using an enemy bot, have him destroy himself (jump into water or a chasm, for example). Otherwise, that's another enemy you'll have to deal with.

You begin with some basic weapons, gaining more powerful ones as the game progresses. Additionally, most of the weapons can be upgraded, either with upgrades found at random points in the game, or by buying them from two shopkeeping robots (with loads of attitude, natch) that you encounter here and there. You buy upgrades using washers that dead enemies sometimes leave behind.

--A couple of hints: An easy way to get extra washers is to shoot enemy computer terminals and machines. Also, don't be too quick to buy upgrades, and don't upgrade every weapon. Some are worth it, and some aren't. The game will give you some upgrades (for example, you get one at the beginning of "Enter the Trenches," and another is hidden behind a large rock in a trench). Definitely upgrade the rocket launcher (your best defense against Titans), the SPEW (a machine-gun, basically), the Rivet Gun (fire explosive rivets, and has good range) and the Scatter Blaster (devastating at close range). Don't bother to spend the extra rivets on the Mining Laser (weak, even at maximum power) or the Ripper (ditto).

You also have a steady supply of Coring Charges (the game's equivalent of grenades) and special thrown weapons. There's the EMP grenade, which casts an electromagnetic pulse that disables enemies for a few moments, long enough for you to destroy or hijack them. Be careful: Though you have some shielding from the EMP effect, it can disorient you if you get too close. Magma grenades cast a lethally intense pool of liquid fire, very effective against Titans or closely-clustered enemies.

Scattered throughout the game are gold chips. Collect enough of them, and you'll unlock multiplayer levels. Also, you can gain speed chips by finishing a level in a certain amount of time.

Graphically, this title really shines on the XBox. The game features great particle effects; when you destroy an enemy, he tends to explode in stages (usually from the top down), shedding wires, gears, and shrapnel in every direction. The larger the enemy, the more impressive his demise. Lighting and environmental effects are realistically rendered, and Glitch himself is well-designed and moves easily and smoothly. Controls are simple and uncomplicated. Double-handed attacks (for example, with the SPEW and a coring charge) are very effective against large groups of enemies. A single rocket shot combined with a Coring Charge directed at a Titan can be devastating.

What else can I say? First-rate all the way, full of action, humor, and excellent gameplay. Definitely recommended to fans of action games and shooters.

--Christian Wheeler