Metal Arms: Glitch In The System - Official Website

Blast your way to victory as Glitch, the gun-slinging, half-ton menacing bot of Droid City. Found as scrap metal, but transformed into destructive machinery, Glitch is determined to free his people from the evil clutches of General Corrosive and his maniacal army of Mil bots. Unleash a world of pain as you annihilate the General's sinister plan to dominate the world, and salvage the robot race!

Key Features

  • Battle through over 40 missions with sniping, sneaking, puzzle solving, and non-stop shoot'em up action.
  • Hijack enemy bots and use their own evil against them.
  • Exploit 17 deadly weapons to dismantle the militia - literally piece by piece.
  • Commandeer unique vehicles to destroy the evil Mil bots.
  • Enhance your capabilities with multiple different power-ups.
  • Pummel your pals in 7 multiplayer modes, including Death Match.
Game Chronicles goes inside this amazing new project with an exclusive interview by John Carswell.

GCM: Please start us off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about Swingin’ Ape Studios.
Steve Ranck: Sure. I’m Steve Ranck and I’m the president and technical director here at Swingin’ Ape Studios (www.swinginape.com), a video game development studio located in southern California. Our talented team of 20 worked exclusively on the Xbox and GameCube versions of Metal Arms. We came up with the game’s concept and design and hooked up with Sierra and Vivendi Universal as the publisher.

GCM: Secondly, please introduce us to Glitch and General Corrosive.
Steve Ranck: Glitch is a small robot who was discovered unconscious among a pile of rubble on a planet called Iron Star. He has no memory of his past, and although he resembles the planet’s primary robot race called the Droids, his design is unique to everything else on the planet. On his head is a symbol that resembles markings found in the forbidden Morbot region deep under Iron Star’s crust. Glitch is revived by a Droid patrol, equally intrigued by the mysterious bot they unearthed. They upload historical data into Glitch, telling of the creation of the evil General Corrosive and the war between his army of Mil bots and the once peaceful Droid civilization. Current status is hopeless. But now there’s Glitch in the system…

GCM: What can you tell us about Metal Arms: Glitch in the System’s gameplay and what will distinguish it from other action titles?
Steve Ranck: One of the great things about Metal Arms is that it’s a really fun game. At its foundation, Metal Arms has everything that one would want in an action shooter. But on top of that foundation, we’ve built a huge, flexible game that gives the player his choice of how to play it. When we focus-tested Metal Arms, it was exciting to watch the different testers play through the same level in completely different ways, using their own unique strategies. This is exactly the type of gameplay that Metal Arms was designed to deliver.

In addition, we’ve also tried to remove some of the common frustrations that plague a good number of current games. For example, if Glitch gets destroyed, the player won’t have to wait for the level to reload. Glitch respawns at the most recent checkpoint almost instantaneously. Another example is that the player won’t have to learn a new movement control scheme. Even though Metal Arms is a 3rd person shooter, its movement control scheme and targeting is identical to that of a standard 1st person shooter.


GCM: Please tell us about the levels that Glitch will be working his (its?) way through and maybe a bit about Iron Star in general.
Steve Ranck: Metal Arms will take the player on, under, and above Iron Star, a planet inhabited entirely by robots. Very destructive robots. Some of the environments are huge, open areas perfect for vehicles and sniping. Others are tight quarters, ideal for more conventional strategy.

The environments are loaded full of destructible elements. You may be facing off with a badass shielded Titan armed with a shoulder-mounted barrage cannon, but cut the steel cables holding up a nearby explosive and he’s toast. And you’ve saved a bunch of ammo in the mean time.


GCM: What challenges and advantages have presented themselves while creating based around a planet fully inhabited by Droids?
Steve Ranck: Since the characters we’re working with are all robots, the possibilities are limitless. The game’s unique dynamic destruction system allows you to inflict limb damage that shows. Concentrate your firepower on a Titan’s rocket launcher and blow it off so that it dangles helplessly. A few more shots to it and it’ll fly off completely. The AI is completely aware of what has happened to it. With its rocket launcher gone, the Titan is likely to get pissed and move in closer so that its chainguns have more affect. If you can survive long enough, blow off one of its guns. Or its leg. Or both legs! The AI will make adjustments to its behavior and tactics in order to keep the advantage.

Nearly every enemy in Metal Arms can be damaged in a variety of ways, and one way may be more effective than another in certain situations. Snipe off a Grunt’s right arm and he won’t be able to fire his weapon. But snipe off his left arm and he won’t be able to throw grenades. Or, snipe off his head and watch his targeting go to hell!

Another advantage that a robot planet gave us is the notion of robot AI. Since robot AI is just computer code, we have the freedom to reprogram it on the fly. One of Glitch’s weapons is the Control Tether, a device that fires a fiber optic cable into an enemy’s data port and then transfers a copy of Glitch’s program into the enemy. The player finds himself in full control of the enemy robot, complete with its unique arsenal of weaponry and abilities. Of course, it may take a while for nearby enemies to realize this, which gives the player the element of surprise!

Another way to reprogram enemy AI is by use of the Recruiter Grenade, a mysterious Morbot device that Glitch can obtain in a number of ways. Toss the grenade near an enemy bot and it’ll reprogram its AI allegiance subroutines to be allied with Glitch. From that point until its death, your new friend will faithfully and viscously fight by your side. The Recruiter Grenade becomes an extremely powerful weapon when you find a nice cluster of enemies to land it near.


GCM: What types of tools, vehicles and abilities will Glitch have at his disposal?
Steve Ranck: Glitch has an arsenal of weapons, grenades, vehicles, site weapons, buddies, enemy bots, and environmental elements to use as he wishes. I’ve described the Control Tether and Recruiter Grenade above. But the more direct weapons snap onto Glitch’s right elbow, and each specializes in a different type of damage. Nearly every weapon can be upgraded, making them progressively more destructive as the game goes on. When and where to upgrade is largely up to the player.

There are several types of site weapons in the game. For example, snipe a Grunt out of an armored pillbox and take control of it yourself.

I don’t want to give too much away here, but we have some very cool vehicles in Metal Arms that Glitch can jump into and use in a number of different ways. If a vehicle is highly guarded, try tethering into an enemy Grunt and commandeering the vehicle from under their metal noses!


GCM: How much freedom will the player have when it comes to achieving Glitch’s objectives?
Steve Ranck: Metal Arms was designed to give players the ability to play it the way they want to. Everything we’ve put into the game, the variety of enemies, vehicles, weapons, grenades, environments, upgrades, level design, allies, dynamic destruction, complex AI, etc. gives players the opportunity to play the game in a variety of ways.

GCM: What will Metal Arms offer in the way of multiplayer modes and will any of these modes be playable online?
Steve Ranck: For Xbox and GameCube, Metal Arms supports 2, 3, and 4-way splitscreen multiplayer games (2-way for PS2). We have the basic Death Match, King of the Hill, and Reverse Tag. But we’ve also introduced elements that make the single player Metal Arms game unique into the multiplayer games. For instance, throughout the multiplayer levels, you can find powered-down AI bots. You play primarily as Glitch, but when you come across one of these AI bots, you can fire your Control Tether into its data port and take him for a spin. Alternatively, you can fire off a Recruiter Grenade and the bot will power up and join your team. Get a few on your side and watch your enemies run. Of course, your opponents may steal these bots from you, if they can. You can even recruit an opponent and ride his score. This really adds a lot of unique depth and fun to the usual split screen multiplayer shooter games. Of course, the multiplayer levels have many other elements, too, such as vehicles, site weapons, sniper’s lairs, trenches, physics objects, etc.

GCM: Finally, what can you tell us about the graphics in Metal Arms? Will there be any differences between the game’s various versions (Xbox, PS2, and GCN)?
Steve Ranck: Instead of developing on the slower platform (PS2) and then converting the game to the more powerful Xbox and GameCube systems, we took a different approach. We designed Metal Arms for Xbox and then made the best version we could for GameCube. Then, Mass Media signed on to develop the PS2 version with the similar philosophy of making the best PS2 version of the game possible. With this approach, Metal Arms delivers visuals to the best of each platform’s abilities.

Swingin’ Ape developed a proprietary engine called Fang to pull off the aggressive visuals and special effects we needed for Metal Arms. On Xbox and GameCube, we’re using pretty much every trick in the book, from radiosity lighting to detail maps (so things don’t get blurry when you get close to them) to bump mapping and dynamic shadows. We developed an array of material shaders that our art staff used to render complex surfaces with realistic lighting. The most widely use shader in Metal Arms is the metal surface shader. Probably no surprise there. But it’s a particularly cool shader because it allows the metal to appear corroded in areas so that the reflectivity varies across the surface.


GCM: Thank you for your time. Would you care to close up this Q&A with any last thoughts?
Steve Ranck: I could talk for pages more, but I should probably just end here. Enjoy the game! We had a lot of fun making it. www.metalarms.com has more information.