"Fun for a while, but too repetetive"

The developers at Metro3D were obviously trying to do something different when they developed Armada. A hybrid space shooter/adventure/rpg, Armada is a unique and ambitious game that suffers from repetition, high difficulty, and lack of focus.

Basically, you start by selecting from a number of different alien races, and receive a ship. From there, you can do any number of things-- attack enemy ships, answer distress calls, run escort missions, ferry supplies, etc; all the standard staple missions of a space combat game. Your ship gains experience and raises levels like in a standard RPG, and you can earn money to add different weapons and enhancements to your ship.

The game uses an overhead perspective giving the game a similar feel to Asteroids during the battles. These battles can be a lot of fun; there's something cathartic about shooting everything that moves. The control has a few issues, however; the movement of your ship is very imprecise, as there is no real sense of momentum; you can't move in one direction while turning and shooting in another, making a lot of your shooting imprecise at best. I really feel this game needs a control scheme similar to Asteroids, where you can thrust and continue to move in a certain direction while you rotate and fire another direction. Therefore, it's hard to get of strategic shots.

Another problem with Armada is the lack of game focus. It's open ended, but too much so. You always have a variety of missions to attempt, and these can be fun for awhile, but they quickly end up repetitive, as you get tired of escorting yet another slow freighter for what seems like forever. The open ended structure of the game makes it appealing for a while, but the lack of a clear plot and/or a feeling of progression through the game really hurts this one. It's obvious that a lot of these problems are due to the online capabilities being scrapped-- this sort of game would work well on the Internet, with hundreds of ships vying for bragging rights. As a single player game, it gets boring after a few hours. With two or three players, it can be more fun. The four player game is almost unplayable, however, because there's just too much going on at once.

Armada was programmed using Windows CE, and it shows-- I'm really surprised this game isn't a PC port, because it really feels like one. The visuals aren't pushing the Dreamcast's power, but the artwork is nice, there's little to no slowdown, and some good explosions. The background music is barely noticeable, but the sounds are good, and the voice acting isn't really too bad for a game of this type.

In a way, this game is disappointing simply because there's so much more that it could have been. With Internet capabilities, tweaked controls, and a more focused single-player story, Armada could have been a classic. Hopefully Metro3D will take this decent first attempt and build on it, making Armada 2 into a classic.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/00, Updated 11/21/00