Phantom Crash

"Should have stayed in the hanger..."

To save time: Phantom Crash had the potential to be great, but, it's lacking some important features, and depth of gameplay. Recommended for die-hard Mech tinkerers only.

Anyway. What we have here is a game about mecha pilots in a futuristic Japan, fighting it out for supremacy of a set of arenas. These mechs (Scoobies is the term used in the game, but I will stick with mech, for simplicity) are built from a number of parts (Body / legs / 2 arms / 2 shoulders / chip / ''extra'' parts), and set into the arenas by their pilots, much like open deathmatch games. There, they fight until eliminated, or they retire (Leave the arena through an entrance).

Let's go to building your Scoobie first. You start off with enough cash to just about afford a basic mech. Each mech has a number of components: the body (Which provides most of the hit points), legs (For movement, and they can be of many varieties: biped, quadraped, hexaped, hovercraft, wheels, tracks, etc.), arm weapons (For shooting things, stuff like rifles and knives), shoulder weapons (Heavy damage stuff, like rocket/grenade launchers), a Chip (Computerised assistant-device, which deals with locking-on weapons and can activate a poweful shield to help you, as well as providing battlefield hints sometimes), and optional parts (Like extra armor, optic camoflague (Think Predator, and you're there: it hides you from view, and missile locks, for a certain period of time, before needing to recharge. Your Chip will, if it's at a sufficiently high level, warn you when it's gonna go), and the like). Each part can be customised (Made lighter or heavier, with corresponding alterations to performance), and chips can be upgraded (Improving it's targetting and assistance skills). Parts cannot be mixed between the manufacturers, however you can mix a single manufacturer's parts freely on your machine, and chips are all generic. The amount of options here is overwhelming, as each manufacturer has a differrent set of weapons and equipment. You could spend ages setting up your machine ready for a battle.

Then we get to the fighting. You have a choice of three arenas to fight in, and games are either played duringthe day, or at night. You must destroy all the mechs in a particular rank and time of day, to fight the ranker (Boss). Beat them, and you get their trophy. Carry on, and you can take fight against increasingly skilled opponents, until you are the master of the arenas.

This is where the game falls down. For a start, only three arenas. You have a choice of entrance area, but they aren't exactly huge environments: comparably, two of the levels are about as big as one of GoldenEye's DM levels. The third is quite large, and is mainly underground. You earn money for trashing the other mechs, or by destroying the random items around the environemnt (Which, in the beginning, rpoves much more of a cash-cow: 10,000 NY for a shot at a bus, or 2000 NY for going after a mech, hmm... you can easily make 50,000 NY on two of the maps, just from scenery... and it re-generates in between the battles, too, so you can do it all again. Whee!). There is only one gametype: straight DM. Although it is mentionned that some of the pilots are in teams, it doesn't mean anything, in-game, so no team games, or other modes. Once you've trashed everyone else at the arena, you get to fight the Ranker, for the arena's trophy.

Now you know what's going on, shall we explain further? Let's dissect the game...

Gameplay- The customisation is excellent, but, there's simply not enough to do with your mech. Fighting arena battles gets boring quickly, when there's so few arenas. Gran Turismo, which had a similar gameplay setup, had many differrent tracks and events for it's action sections, plus the licence tests, and much more restricted events. This doesn't have anywhere near as much: a few place restrictions, like ''legs only'', or ''Kojima (Manufacturer) only'', but it's few and far between. Your mechs are all dressed up, with very few places to go. The actual fighting is quite entertaining, which makes the lack of variety even worse: it's a fun game, it really is, but with so few game types, it gets dull far quicker than it should. Being able to form teams with other pilots, and have grudges against other teams, would have been an excellent feaure: almost like online-style ''clan''ning. But it's not there. When you do beat a ranker, nobody challenges you for your title. It's structured very much like Gran Turismo in this respect, and would have benefitted from some more thought.

I digress, though: the fighting is fun. The arena's aren't that well designed, but they're still good for the job. The variety of parts allows you to outfit your mech in many differrent ways, depending on your play style. Charging around and shooting people is always good fun, but it does grate after a while.

Plot- You want to rule the arenas. Yay. Not huge on plot, this. A better career mode, which would have provided the chance to make your own plot, would have helped.

GFX/SFX- Graphics are good. The mechs are very well-designed, and look appropriately sleek and faster (Scoobies are far more stylish than any BattleMech). Some bits do look a little N64-style blurry, but it's nothing that really gets in the way of the game. A better radar function (Like the one in Halo, for example) would have helped: as it is, there are arrows around the targetting reticle to indicate enemies, and this is a bit of a clumsy way of doing things. On the plus side, it does mean you don't have to draw your eyes away from the middle of the screen much.

The SFX are good, and sound like guns, knives, mech feet, etc. Special mention to the soundtrack, J-pop that you buy from a music store in the game. It's pretty good, but custom soundtrack function would have been a nice bonus, even if you had to buy it from the music shop, or fit a part to your mech to get it.

Replayability- Not much. You defeat the rankers, that's it. There's no real incentive to fight through the game mulitple times. Oh, it has a multiplayer mode, too, and you can import in your mechs from the main game.

Buy / Rent?- Rent first. There's simply not enough here to justify a straight-out purchase without trying the game first, to see if you like it.

To sum up, Phantom Crash could have been one of the best mech games ever: some more work on the career mode, and it would be a must-have. As it is, it's incredibly dissappointing, because you can constantly see ways the game could have been better. If you're big into customisation and tinkering with parts, then you'll have a great time here. If not, then there probably won't be enough to keep your interest, and you'll be better off looking for a differrent game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/27/02, Updated 12/27/02