"1-Fly around. 2-Shoot guy. 3-Goto 1."

Armada is not a great game. It’s not an awful game by any means, and some may even believe that it borders on good. But with all the great games available for the Dreamcast, why settle for anything less than fantastic?

So the human race has broken off into different clans and scattered across the galaxy, blah blah blah. You can pick which of the clans you want to play as, a la Star Control, and the group you choose to play determines what kind of spaceship you’ll have, a la Star Control. A Big Threat rolls in and causes all the different groups to join together. Your job, of course, is to vanquish the Big Threat. At times it is hinted that you may be able to settle your differences with the Big Threat diplomatically, but this is not an option in the actual game, where you fly around and shoot stuff, a la Star Control.

If you like flying around and shooting stuff, then Armada will make you soil your pants with glee. If you think flying around and shooting stuff gets old after a while, then Armada will make you soil your pants in horror. Even then, the act of flying around and shooting stuff is hindered by the controls. Remember in Asteroids how the directional buttons would rotate your ship, and pressing thrust would move you forward? In Armada you have to move the joystick in the direction you want to go in, then press thrust. This is unintuitive and takes some getting used to. It also eliminates the ability to strafe and shoot at the same time like you could in Asteroids.

Want to buy upgrades for your ship so you can fly around and shoot stuff more efficiently? Then you’ll have to press your scanner button to pick up the money that enemy ships drop when they blow up. You’ll be killing and scanning thousands and thousands of ships, so get ready for some cool-ass thumb blisters! And what kind of upgrades can you look forward to? How about power-ups that make your gun shoot faster or shoot more bullets (hey, isn’t that the same thing?)! Or, if you save up tens of thousands of bucks, a device that makes your gun shoot faster AND shoot more bullets (Note: each enemy you kill nets you about 2 or three dollars)!

There are some RPG elements in Armada but they aren’t integrated very well. Shoot dudes to raise levels. Your stats increase when you gain levels, but there is no way to see what your stats are. Reach a new level and your damage resistance may go up, but only if damage resistance is one of your stats. There is no way of knowing. Maybe your enemies’ stats go down. For all we know gaining a level could do absolutely nothing. I bet it’s a placebo effect, like you think your ship is more powerful so you play with more confidence and do better. Gaining levels also takes way too long. The way the game progresses is: kill a bunch of bosses, reach a boss ship that is impossible to beat, spend hours leveling up until you can beat it, and start over again.

The multiplayer mode is a big, big disappointment. Instead of a four-player split screen Star Control/Asteroids inspired death match (which would have totally rocked), we get a boring co-op mode that is actually less fun to play than the single player. Worst of all, players have to stay on the same screen, making movement extremely hard and visibility zero.

In the end, Armada is mucho mindless but also pretty harmless. Before you buy or rent Armada you should ask yourself if raising levels and flying around/shooting stuff is a worthwhile way to spend the fleeting moments of your mortal existence. If your soul cries out yes, then go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/02, Updated 09/06/02