"Let the wars begin! A great game for fans of the show"

Like many people in the UK and around the world, I was a big fan of the TV series known as Robot Wars, in which competitors build remote controlled machines with weapons which would battle in an arena, and I often imagined how great it would be to take part in the series with my own robot. The video games based on the series are a great way to build your own robot and compete in the Robot Wars arena without having to leave your own home. This is my review for the first of the two games which have been released for the PC; Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction.

Graphics: The graphics on this game are very good, especially if you run it on a top-level PC. The robots and arenas generally look very impressive and realistic and each arena features specific features and effects such as flamethrowers, steam vents, shattering glass and exploding mines, which are very well animated. However, there are a few problems with the graphics on the game. Firstly, if your robot has a gripping weapon such as a Razer-type claw, it won't appear to actually grab the opponent but you will still be able to drag the other robot around as if it did. This is only a minor flaw and it probably won't bother you too much, but there are others that might. The damage graphics on the game is far from perfect. After a few hits, the robots' armour will start to break off, and it does so in clumps until eventually you are left with a robot made up of just the frames and inner parts that make it work. It must be said that the robots without their armour look very primitive and not particularly realistic. I realise that having a realistic damage system with dents and scrapes on the robot would be difficult, but I can't help but think that it could have been better than it is. Also, some of the camera angles on the game make it very difficult to play. Sometimes the view of your robot will be obscured by a tower or a lava pit which means you either can't see what you're doing or you'll have to change view to see yourself clearly. This can be an inconvenience and can even cause you to lose control of a battle which can be very frustrating. So overall the graphics are good, but there are some flaws which may slightly hinder the playing experience.

Audio: During the battles, there are many sound effects around the arenas. There are crashing sounds as the robots collide with each other or with objects around the arena and more when you use weapons against your opponents. Unfortunately, these sounds are pretty much the same and they get quite tedious after a short while. If you choose, you can hear commentary during the battle from Robot Wars' Jonathan Pearce, which can add authenticity for fans of the TV series and certainly makes it more entertaining. Some may get bored of hearing the same old phrases over and over again, but I think it makes the game feel much more like an official product. You also get a video at the start of the game with the official Robot Wars theme tune, which is a fantastic inclusion and another thing that makes the game feel authentic.

Gameplay: As with any game, the thing that will determine how much you enjoy it is how it plays and this game, in the main, does not disappoint. You have the option to buy a prebuilt robot or build one from scratch for yourself. You can choose which parts to use, which weapons to equip and which armour to protect your robot with. Once that's done, you can either take part in single arcade modes or go straight into competition mode and try to win tournaments to earn money and unlock new arenas and robots from the series. The types of arena contests you can take part in include simple battles which range from two-robot head-to-head battles to six-robot annihilators, capture the flag (where you have to hold the flag for as long as you can without your opponents knocking it from your control), mad bomber (where you have to pass the bomb to other robots before they explode and immobilise you) and collateral damage (where you have to destroy more objects around the arena than your opponents). The battling is generally very enjoyable and you can employ many different tactics to win each round. You can damage the other robot until they have a failure or to get points from the judges for destruction, you can push them into the corner patrol zones and get the house robots to destroy them instead, you can flip the other robot so that it can't move and is immobilised, or you can push or carry your opponent into pits or off the edges of the arenas. This means that you are not employing the same tactic every time, although there are certain methods which make it too easy to win each battle. For example, it is way too easy to flip another robot, even if you don't have a flipping weapon, simply by pushing them into a wall. Most of the robots on the game are incapable of self-righting, which makes this method a constant success. However, later in the game you will come up against real-life robots such as Chaos 2, Hypnodisc and Razer and these battles are much tougher and you will have to work a lot harder to beat them. Eventually, you will be able to unlock and buy all of the featured real-life robots and that is where the fun really starts as you can take control of your favourites from the series and take on all of their real-life opponents to recreate the battles you enjoyed on TV. All in all, the game is very fun to play and you will enjoy building your own robots and playing through the game to unlock the bonus arenas and robots.

Lifespan: The game will take a little while to complete and you will have to build a few new robots or adjust your old ones to compete in all of the tournaments with weapon/weight/value restrictions. Earning money to buy the real-life robots from the series is a great incentive to complete the competition mode and even when that's finished you will enjoy using all of the machines that you have bought. If you have a friend who is also into Robot Wars, then you will have a lot of fun with the 2 player mode, where you can battle it out with robots you have created or ones you have bought in all of the different arenas to see who is the best arena battler. Non-fans of the series may find the game a little repetitive and tedious and won't enjoy unlocking the real-life robots as much as people who watched the show, but if you loved the TV series, you will have a lot of fun with this game for a long time and I recommend it to anybody who has ever wanted to build their own robot and battle in the Robot Wars arena.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/07