Mech Assault: Phantom War Review

Mech Assault: Phantom War for the DS features a spanking new storyline and has all the perks of a console game. There are full-rendered cutscenes for point in the storyline, a good voice-over for radio communication, a variety of mechanized war vehicles for missions and campaigns, and multiplayer experience with various modes, not just deathmatch.

Gameplay: Fun with a good amount of challenge. Players can jump in and out of mechs easily but there are very few missions requiring this for you to finish them. Touchscreen mini-games can be a bit deceiving as they’re not as easy as they look, especially when you get to later missions. Campaigns can be both easy and difficult, some require nothing but getting to a location unscathed, while some require you to protect a location against armies of tanks and mechs.

Graphics: As much as Backbone may have tried to bring the game’s Xbox graphics to the DS, the visuals still have lower-resolution textures and simplistic mountainous terrain. They may have given the game a whole new storyline, but the graphics would’ve needed a little more tweaking. However, the game does attempt to make it up to gamers by a few kicks here and there such as buildings toppling with a KABOOM! when severely damaged and little humans cavorting around to get underfoot of your giant mech.The 3D environments are also far from impressive as compared to other DS games. Things are okay when the bare minimum’s on the screen, but explosions and multiple mechs clutter up the view and you’ll get slowdown and tearing.

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Mech Assault: Phantom War for the DS features a spanking new storyline and has all the perks of a console game. There are full-rendered cutscenes for point in the storyline, a good voice-over for radio communication, a variety of mechanized war vehicles for missions and campaigns, and multiplayer experience with various modes, not just deathmatch.

Gameplay: Fun with a good amount of challenge. Players can jump in and out of mechs easily but there are very few missions requiring this for you to finish them. Touchscreen mini-games can be a bit deceiving as they’re not as easy as they look, especially when you get to later missions. Campaigns can be both easy and difficult, some require nothing but getting to a location unscathed, while some require you to protect a location against armies of tanks and mechs.

Graphics: As much as Backbone may have tried to bring the game’s Xbox graphics to the DS, the visuals still have lower-resolution textures and simplistic mountainous terrain. They may have given the game a whole new storyline, but the graphics would’ve needed a little more tweaking. However, the game does attempt to make it up to gamers by a few kicks here and there such as buildings toppling with a KABOOM! when severely damaged and little humans cavorting around to get underfoot of your giant mech.The 3D environments are also far from impressive as compared to other DS games. Things are okay when the bare minimum’s on the screen, but explosions and multiple mechs clutter up the view and you’ll get slowdown and tearing.

Controls: The D-pad/Button combo offers mech control which is a lot like the dual joystick configuration. It’s better to use the stylus mode where the touch screen features the Super Mario 64 DS analog stick emulation for targeting. There’s also an up/down invert toggle option as well as a mode for lefties/righties.

On the touch screen: Poor second screen management. There are touch screen buttons used for control aspects like weapon selection and defense activation. But there are two buttons on this screen that are used just to pull up hints and are not necessary. Switching weapons and tools thus becomes more of a hassle. Lag bugs also occur when swapping between views while driving a tank, and players have to reset their stylus on the screen for the game to recognize it.

It’s a shame the game doesn’t support the WiFi Connection service because it would’ve been cool if you weren’t restricted to local area matches for the multiplayer. The local wireless works though, with the select interface sporting the same touchscreen menu system of the single player experience. But there are various options to navigate to (deathmatch, team battle, king of the hill). Also, the more you do in the Solo Campaign, the more that gets unlocked for multiplayer.

All in all, the audio was fine with good voice actors, but sound effects? meh..could use more improvement. Graphics and visuals were not impressive: low resolution texturing, low detail buildings, graphical glitches, and slowdown when things get too busy. Gameplay and storyline were good, but the controls could’ve been much better. Now that we have shared with you IGN’s review, why not try it for yourself and let us know if you agree or think otherwise, hmm?

Via IGN