Drone Tactics

"You'll need more than RAID to kill these bugs"

Drone Tactics is another game in the tactics genre, occupied by others such as Advance Wars and Front Mission. Though it isn't better than those games, it's a new and exciting concept, and is surprisingly polished for such a relative unknown.

GAMEPLAY - 7/10

The difference in this game is that you don't fight with tanks or planes, but with giant robot bugs, transformed from normal (alien) bugs using a Plot Device (TM). Apparently, some ancient aliens were getting mighty bored, and found a way to turn bugs into machines. This may not sound like much, but the designs are surprisingly solid.

The game is basically moving around on flat terrain and attacking enemies. There are terrain bonuses, much like Advance Wars. However, the bugs resemble the Front Mission wanzers, with different equippable parts and statistics. Sadly, unlike Front Mission, they do not gain experience from using weapons, and are instead bound to a specific weapon (or two) which they get the most damage from. The enemies are also massive campers, which increases the difficulty.

You can use attack cards to boost attacks, and use health restoration cards, etc. However, each card requires an annoying minigame for absolutely no reason except to make you angry and possibly break your touchscreen tapping. It would be better if these cards didn't have any minigames at all. The attack cards don't even work on strong enemies, which you need them for.

STORY - 4/10

Basically, two kids get teleported to an alien planet after being contacted by talking bugs. Apparently, they chose kids because any reasonable adult would get freaked out and try to squish the talking bug. Anyways, they embark on an epic journey with no concern for their personal safety. Well, at least they have adult supervision, or they would have died by the beginning of the game. Some of the characters and dialogue are hilarious, but the story is not very plot-heavy and ultimately unfulfilling.

GRAPHICS - 7/10

Actually, the graphics in this game look great, and both the terrain and the battle animations are top-notch, though slightly repetitive. However, the menu and dialogue are a little bland.

MUSIC - 5/10

This game was composed by a famous game composer, but you wouldn't really know based on the few tracks in it. It's also MIDI...bleh.

TOTAL - 6/10

This is one of those "rent, don't buy" games. But if the game creators had put more work into it, it would have been AWESOME.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/08

Game Release: Drone Tactics (US, 05/12/08)