Some of you may remember that Japanese cartoon from 1985 with the title Robotech. It pretty much spawned all those new anime shows that are all over the place. It had that good ol' Japanese animation and featured the standard sci-fi plot and narration. I never saw the show, but the plot of the game is pretty simple: A giant ship crashes on an island. It is discovered and a city forms around the ship. It is thought that it is from an alien race and that they will most likely come back. Humans build new technology based on that found in the ship, and it is soon found that the aliens want their ship back. Badly. They attack and attack and attack, and the humans defend Earth - and the ship - with the new technology they essentially stole from the aliens. The game is based around different missions that involve lots of shooting and lots of killing of the Zentraedi, those damn aliens.

G R A P H I C S
Now, as I said above, the game is based on a cartoon. Therefore, to have the game look a lot like a cartoon, they decided to make the graphics Cel-Shaded. They look alright. When one of my friends came over to play this, I asked him what he thought of the graphics and he said, "Eh, I dunno, it looks ...like a cartoon." I was just a tad frustrated with that. It's supposed to look like a cartoon. Now, whether the graphics are good cel-shaded graphics or not... that's a different story. Overall, they are pretty good, but there are some certain specific parts of the graphics that honestly could be better. For example, the explosions. There's absolutely nothing special with the explosions - in fact, the explosions are bad. All they show for, say, a building falling down is a bunch of little orange blobular shapes with gray around them. It would look much better if it was just one big explosion. It looks kind of cheap this way, I have to admit. The shots look average, nothing really special. Pretty much everything else looks better, but not really too far above average.I still like cel-shading, but this doesn't really compare with Cel Damage. The lines seem a little more blurred and the integration of 3D aspects doesn't look as nice as it could. The immediate envioronments look pretty freakin' good, but there isn't too much else to see - there aren't really any nice horizon images. It looks like there's the playing area and... it just ends. The on-screen display is pretty well laid out, with everything you need to see. The one little annoyance is with the radar. When you lock on someone, it's not clear where they are - above you, below you, or on which side. Something could have been done differently to show exactly where the enemy is. The humans look nice, the ships look nice, many things look nice. Overall, the graphics are pretty good - not anything extremely special - but could be just a tad better.

G A M E P L A Y
Once again, it's based on a sci-fi cartoon. Now, the plot may be pretty good, but there really isn't too much variation. There are different kinds of levels, but they are all just about shooting pretty much everything you can. There's a really huge upside, though; your character can change into three modes - Guardian, Fighter, and Battloid. In each mode, there are different options and weapons. Each type of fighter has two weapons. In Battloid, which is the standard mech mode, you can walk/run on the ground, or use the boost button to hover above the ground and move a little quicker. The two weapons are the machine gun, and the auto-missile-lock-on machine gun. The Battloid is useful for very close combat on the ground, or when you need to maneuver very easily and have no need for missiles. The Fighter is the jet - fast, powerful, but hard to use when there isn't much space. The two weapons options are missiles and the machine gun. The Fighter is really useful sometimes, such as when you're in space, but it is almost impossible to use in medium-to-small spaces. It's really fun to do loops with the Fighter, and it even makes you dodge missiles easier, which is a huge plus. The Guardian is pretty much a cross between those two. It hovers above the ground and is speedier than the Battloid, but, of course, less speedy than the Fighter. It too has missiles and the machine guns as its weapons. It's pretty simple to hit your target, usually. The game locks on an enemy automatically, and the missiles go right to the target. You have to be facing the enemy for the machine guns to hit, of course. One thing I really don't like is that the game seems to choose one of the most inconvenient enemies possible - meaning one that's really far away, as opposed to one that's right next to you. It's a little bit frustrating. Another thing that bothers me is the bosses. It is way too arcadey, meaning the boss is almost invincible and he seems to hurt you much more than any of the other enemies. It almost ruins the game... not quite, though - only when you get to the bosses. The menus are snazzy and done very well. So, overall, the game is fun, but very repetitive. The same type of mission keeps coming up again and again. If there was variety, it would spice things up a bit.

C O N T R O L
In a word, "well done." That's two words, but you know what I mean. The controls in this game are really great - they are exactly what they should be and then some. What is most important is the switching of modes. Man, is that just right. You use the d-Pad to change between modes, and it's extremely easy to just quickly tap it and *ohmigosh, look at that* you're in the mode you want to be. Left goes to the Battloid, Up goes to Guardian, and Right foes to Fighter. Even the directions are all what you'd expect. One thing that's a little annoying is the down button. It's never really clear what it does, except for in the Guardian mode, where it should slow you down, but sometimes seems to switch to Battloid mode. Haven't figured that one out yet. The targeting system is pretty easy, but a little inconvenient if you want to both shoot and re-target at the same time, or in such a short time that you can't move your thumb that fast. Unfortunately, there wouldn't really be any other way to do this, except if Z was choose the next enemy. That would be inconvenient, though. The great thing about the C-Stick for targeting is that you can decide which enemy you want to target by nudging the stick that way. The L and R buttons are used well too, as strafe in most modes but they cause you to spin and twirl when boosting and in Fighter mode.

S O U N D
The music in the game is supposedly true to the cartoon series, but, again, I've never seen the series. The voice overs are done pretty well, and they even used the same voice actors from the series to satisfy those Robotech fiends. One problem is that the recording of the voice overs seems to be done rather poorly becuse there is a very audible buzz whenever someone talks. The shooting sounds are sometimes overpowering and are pretty much average. The game is mostly just shooting, so that's pretty much all you hear. The music is pretty good, but is often repetitive. There really isn't too much more to say about the sound, so I just won't.

I N - B R I E F
Graphics - 9.1
Gameplay - 7.2
Control - 9.6
Sound - 7.4
Overall - 8.4