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Preview  BattleBots: Beyond the BattleBox
- By Travis Coats


E3 Impressions:

At last week's E3, NGenres finally got a chance to get their grubby hands on Majesco's GBA Battlebots game. We do have a few comments to present, having finally played the game.

The game itself looks quite nice. The 'Bots are modelled after their real life counterparts, and look very close to the real thing, especially considering it is done on the GBA hardware. All your favorites are here, from... that one with the big saw, to... um... the other one with the saw or spinning axe or hammer thing. Personally, I am not familiar with the names of the individual 'Bots, so forgive my ignorance on this particular subject. (Among the many subjects which also fall under this category.)

The gameplay was a bit awkward to get used to. If memory serves (which it does, on occassion) pressing up on the pad always moves the 'bot forward, similar to a certain survival horror series on a certain purple Cube. However, since the action is much faster paced than "that other game" which uses this type of control scheme, it is much harder to adapt to. Your 'bot will often fly forward so fast that you can't tend to avoid the obstacles and implements of pain that are set up around the arena with the sole purpose of destroying your 'bot. It is hard enough to avoid having the arena destroy your 'bot, but when you add in the challenge of avoiding the opponent and trying to actually DESTROY that opponent, it gets a bit overwhelming with such an awkward control scheme.

The action, once it begins, is very fast paced. When you collide with your opponent, or a random damage-dealing part of the arena, your will see gears flying off of your 'bot. Eventually, one of the 'bots will end up completely demolished, and in every match I played, it was mine. I couldn't figure out how to effectively utilize the weapons on any of the various machines, and doing so would probably help in my anemic performances in the arena.

I am not sure exactly how close to completion the game was, but with a little tweaking to the control scheme, the fast pace action of this Battlebots title could definitely make this an enjoyable game on the GBA. We'll have more on this game as it nears its release in the future.

Neal
-05.28.02