Reviewed: January 4, 2009
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Tecmo

Developer
Vogster Entertainment

Released: November 18, 2008
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-4

9
8
7
8
8.0

Supported Features:

Robocalypse has you at the controls of your own robot army with a great storyline that adds enough to the game but does not add so much that it gets boring or even annoying. You are the commander of an army but like in real life you do not order around individuals but order squads and a few individuals with special abilities like commanders.

Point to a spot and plant a flag, you’re on screen troops will march to it and defend or attack according to the flag type you plant. You can pretty much order your troops around the screen and have them take control of areas or defend your bases by these simple flag plantings.

You do have direct control of a select few heroes with six different characters that have distinct abilities that you obtain at various points of the campaign. Your heroes include Joe Commando, Sergeant Payne, Spyder Scout, Pyro Assault, Viper the Sniper and Warlord General. Each hero has abilities you could easily guess from their names and each one is handy in different situations.

The name of this game is simple war using a funny and well thought out story of robots with a mind of their own that try to take over the world and you have to stop them. After some robots go bad a nerd from the same company that created the rogue robots creates some heroes to fight them from war veterans who just happen to be visiting the robot factory.

You lead the good robots with the brains of the veterans on a conflict against the bad robots in a series of missions to defeat the evil Demolisher and his followers. The first missions in the campaign start off as a tutorial and leads to further missions with harder difficulties and more variety.

You control each hero and control all the units on the field using flags but you get more than just heroes and soldiers. You have medic units that will wander after your soldiers and heal any wounded and builder robots used to build your headquarters and other buildings and scavenge for parts to build with.

You can build a headquarters, robot factory, hero factory, workshop, radar and turrets with a few of these being able to upgrade into heavy buildings. Each building has the characteristics you would expect from the name and have specific uses in your missions and gameplay.

Many of your objectives can be easy to understand but hard enough to accomplish that you may have to try each one a few times but you get the hang of gameplay and tactics pretty quickly. The game is good enough that you will be challenged and fun enough with its humorous story to keep you engaged throughout the campaign and into the multiplayer areas.

You can play with up to four others using the multi-card play using the heroes and units of the single player game for even more gameplay value in Robocalypse. With the general flag placement and not having to control each unit on the screen but letting the AI do what is best for each little drone of your army it allows enough freedom of choice for the player to keep things in control.

You don’t get the overwhelming feeling of losing the fight due to not being able to control enough units and the only problems you have are more of bad tactics and not of a lack of individual unit skill. You have enough in your hero’s to offer a distinct attack, defend or special ability to give your strategy a chance and the basic building and scavenging adds to the strategy part of the game.

Robocalypse is a very fun game and they did a great job with the cartoon looking characters on screen and the graphics for things like explosions, fire from your Pyro assault hero or general firefights that look pretty good. The use of the two screens is handled very well and this is just how a strategy game should be done with the dual screen and touch screen set up.

The audio is pretty good but of course there is almost no voice and very little in the way of variety but it all works pretty well. They did a nice job with an orchestral sounding theme music that is very reminiscent of those old classic Warner Brothers’ cartoons.

Robocalypse is a great game and one that is definitely worth purchasing for any strategy fans wanting a great campaign or multiplayer gaming against the computer or one another. This is one of those rare games that has not come along often enough for the handheld system and well worth a look at for any gaming fans.