Publisher
Konami

Developer
Konami

Released: September 20, 2005
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen

7
6
8
8
7.7

Supported Features:

S.L.A.I. creates a synthetic universe; a visually stimulating recreation of what could easily be the Internet of the future. You create an avatar and much like .hack or even TRON, you are transported to a world of electrons and lights, high speed data transmissions, and interconnecting data trunks that make up a virtual city.

But therein lies the largest pitfall of S.L.A.I. You get so wrapped up in the presentation that you seldom play the game. Then again, is the presentation part of the game…I’m so confused. From the moment you step into HAVEN you are immersed in a world of chat prompts, system crashes, and even bandwidth lag. You can manually move around the cyber world or pick your destination from a menu.

All of this is purely a disguise for a standard interface that all leads up to a robot fighting game that might just be the future evolution of Battlebots. And disguise and deception is what this interface is all about, because frankly, the game is pretty boring when you actually get to play it.

You’ll learn the functions of numerous shops around HAVEN and how they all help to build the ultimate fighting machine or enhance your own personal abilities at operating them. And even though the frequent trips around HAVEN can get monotonous, you can’t help but enjoy the trippy interface.

Once you strip away the cool interface and well-disguised menus and configuration screens you are left with arena combat that takes place in a variety of venues against a variety of robot designs each with their own attack and defensive capabilities. You can jump into an arena and blast the competition, earning money for damage inflicted. Just make sure to get through that exit before you take too much damage yourself.

There is a massively complex configuration system in place that allows you to create countless combinations of fighting bots, installing parts, and sub-systems within those parts. But for as much micromanagement as you can do during the building processing, none of it really carries over into the arcade-style combat that relies more on your reflexes that the parts you might have installed.

To make the game even more unbalanced is the lack of any grades or ranks for robots. This means you can quite literally create the ultimate robot killer very early in the game and proceed to walk all over the competition. And even when the competition does start to prove a bit more worthy, your access to new parts and more powerful weapons easily offsets their increased power.

With the freedom to create any kind of robot you like you also have the freedom to play the game however you like. You can install long ranged weapons and deliver death from across the battlefield or load up on armor and get up close for some pummeling melee combat.

There is a substantial single-player campaign that will have you rising from lowly noob to world champion robot slayer. It’s a long and somewhat repetitive road to the top but there is unprecedented freedom to create some very unique paths to the finish line.

There is multiplayer support for two combatants locally or up to four over the Internet using a broadband connection. Of course that is assuming you can find anybody playing the game online. Even several weeks after release there just aren’t that many people playing online, and I’ve only seen the game in specialty software stores; none of the major retailers seem to be stocking S.L.A.I., which is a shame because this game has some massive online potential.

The setup screens during the robot building and customization are nicely designed with clean legible text and good icon imagery. Regrettably, what little polish the game can muster when you aren’t playing it is all lost when you take control of your robot on the battlefield.

Special effects are simple and even primitive and there is a lot of pixilization and shimmering and loads of jagged edges. The level design is quite basic with hardly any detail so even the combat is boring. And even though there is a constant flow of enemy robots of various designs entering these arenas, blowing them up starts to lose what little appeal it had.

Sound effects are pretty standard as far as robot combat games go. You get all the expected sounds of rockets, missiles, machine guns, and metal punching metal, jump jets, and explosions. It all envelopes you with a nice Dolby Pro Logic II surround mix.

The two player head-to-head mode will certainly offer some challenge when a friend drops by and the online gameplay is a bubbling pot of opportunity if people could only find and buy the game then get online, this could become the next Unreal Tournament.

But at the end of the day when you are picking up the twisted metal from the smoking battlefield, this is just another robot fighting game with a flashier package.