Battle Engine Aquila

"Control the ground and skies with the BEA (but not the water)"

Battle Engine Aquila it's a EXCELLENT action/simulation game!! You take control of one of the most versatile weapons ever built by mankind and with it, it's your job to destroy the opposition!

STORY
Not that much of a story implemented here, except that this seems ripped out of Waterworld, because the whole action runs on a planet that is full of water with only a half a dozen islands to be seen!
The actual story goes around two factions, the Forseti and the Muspell, each one trying to take one more piece of land than the other..
You play the part of Hawk Winter, the only person on the Forseti side who has the skills to pilote the Aquila, since all other possible pilots were killed!

GAMEPLAY
The game shines, but... It SHINES here! This game got me incredibly grabed on to it till I cleared it and got at least S Ranks on half of the missions!
You control solely the Battle Engine Aquila (BEA), but, it alone makes up for alot, having a considerable fire power and being able to be a sort of arachnid tank, but also a jet fighter, each mode with it's own weapons and eventually having several configurations of weapons to pick from).

But don't think this ''excess'' of manueverability is all good! On the ground, the BEA posesses a shield that recharges considerably fast, but on the sky, it has to sacrifice the shield in order to maintain himself on the air.. and being extremely vulnerable to enemy fire!

Also, did I mentioned that the BEA is only kind of the solid ground and open sky?? Well.. that's because that the BEA like many cats hates water! One step too far and BOOM goes the Battle Engine!
Now, like if that wasn't bad, how about levels were you have to escort plain regular boats, on a planet that has landmass like a number 1 prize!

Actually, that's something that made me have a lot of fun in playing this game. The BEA in such cases has to/can do of almost every slightly larger surface a landing platform to recharge it's batteries.. and when I m every, it's really every! As long as there is enough room for the BEA to put all the feet on top, it can be an enemy battle-cruiser for all that matters you.. on top of that, why not unleash your weaponry at them?

GRAPHICS
The graphics are VERY nice indeed!! Feautring a lot of light effects, and sporting decent models (if you look carefully you can notice the detail put on the little soldiers that run around you).
On the graphics field it's something not disappointing at all.

SOUND/MUSIC
Well.. the sounds are nothing of new, nothing you wouldn't expect from a Sci-Fi game with lasers and stuff!
The music, well.. it runs a bit on the background but for those who notice it might actually be something catchy to each situation.

REPLAYABILITY
If you liked the game the first trip around, you'll surely go for the second because it's more than certain that you didn't cleared everything in the first time!!
There is a goodies section that gets gradually unlocked with each mission cleared, according to how many targets destroyed of a certain type, and what brings a lot of need to replaying missions are the goodies that require a certain number of A or S Ranks to open them!!
Each mission gets qualified from F to S according to your performance.. if the rank is low, little things you will unlock, if the rank is good, not only you will unlock goodies but in some cases it will allow you to play the following mission in the EVO mode (hard mode) with a bit more of challenge, from wich however you are still expected to get a good rank if you want to unlock ALL goodies!

If you get fed up with all this mission clearing thing for a simple rank, then get a extra pad or so and call up your buddies!!!
With local spli-screen modes like Cooperative and Skirmish you can enjoy some extra fun with your friends.
Saddly is the fact that it only supports local gaming.

OVERALL
Battle Engine Aquila it's a very nice game indeed! Of course, you'll have to like the type. It's gameplay and mechanincs are very good and the graphics give some supoort!
The multi-player feature also should have a little credit, but just depends on how much you like to play on a ''squished'' screen!!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/03