Metal Head

"Hahahahaha!"

After reading a terrible review of this over at Sega-16.com, I decided to get it. Not that I'm a masochist who enjoys bad games, I've heard that this was one of the few 32x games that was in 3D. I wasn't expecting anything of the gorgeous Shadow Squadron quality, I just wanted to see how this game was. This is game is simply terrible.

Graphics - 2/10
Terrible, terrible graphics. The only thing that looks decent is your mech and a few other enemy mechs. They look pretty damn good. The draw distance is horrid and you sometimes can't even see whats shooting you when it's not even far away. The majority of the levels look very generic and the buildings are horribly textured. It's one big, smudgy mess. When someone fires a weapon, you see small and slow moving sprites. It's very hard to describe how terrible the graphics are. You have to see it for yourself. When characters are speaking, you are shown an animated portrait that is simply hysterical. It doesn't look like the character is talking, it looks like he's constipated and his mouth doesn't even move. I had a headache after playing this game for an hour. I'm not joking. Everything is very smudgy and blurry. It's a major strain on the eyes.

Sound - 1/10
Horrendous. The game uses laughable digitized voice work. The weapon sounds are extremely generic and the music is horrendous. It's very low in the mix and very annoying.

Story - 1/10
Apparently someone invented these uber powerful robots. Some terrorists got a hold of these robots and started a massive revolution in a country. You pilot the super powerful Metal Head and it's your job to reclaim this country back single handedly from the terrorists. The odd thing is, nothing was damaged in this revolution because through all the cities you ravage through, everything is intact. Nothing was destroyed at all. Hmm... and why did these terrorists revolt? Alas, we will never know... nor will you ever know the name of the country. It just says, a country.

Gameplay - 1/10
Haha. Unresponsive and extremely cheap would be a way to summarize it. Your mech turns and moves very stiffly and slowly. Everything is slow. When you fire your weapon, it's shoots very slowly. The controls are awkward as well. Also strafing is pointless. When an enemy is firing at you and you strafe to the opposite side, you can see the missile missing you and going past you. However, that's not the case. Even if it goes past you, it hits you. Incredible. You get damaged for dodging missiles. You have to be really far away not to get hurt. All the missions have different goals that range from taking photographs to killing the enemy commander. There is a nice variety between the objectives but it's impossible to enjoy them with everything in the game being bad.

Overall - 1/10
Combine a generic story, with horrible graphics, laughable sounds, unresponsive controls, and cheap incomprehensible gameplay and this is what you get. Everything is lacking. The game really feels like an early version because it feels extremely unfinished. Everything from the opening presentation to the end of the game is unpolished and unfinished. The enemies randomly appear anywhere and always managed to hit you. Cheap and horrible.

If the developers weren't drunk, or maybe if they had more time, this would've been a decent game. At least it would've been playable. If you've seen the Zyrinx 32x tech demo, you'll know that the 32x could pump out some very impressive 3D visuals. Unfortunately, no developers have actually tried utilizing that power. The best we've seen have been Star Wars Arcade and Shadow Squadron which are very impressive games. Compared to the rest of the 32x library, the graphics are impressive. Of course, they are horrible but they're almost as good as Tomb Raider for the Saturn...

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/06