I've been struggling with Metal Marines for the better part of the end of last week and this weekend. It's an old Super NES strategy game that came out on Virtual Console in the last month. I believe it's almost as old as Dune II on the Genesis (that came out around 1992/1993). It's incredibly strange, but that could be because I'm used to stuff like Warcraft II and Rise of Nations (omg the best $5 I've ever spent... I'd pay $70 for that game, knowing what I know now) on the RTS side, and Fire Emblem and Advance Wars on the TBS side.

Metal Marines ends up being a little of both, I guess. Sort of. Not really. It's incredibly structured - very rigid. Here's the setup:

* Each side - you and your enemy - occupies one island on either side of the map.

* The islands are not symmetrical, meaning that one of you may potentially have a tactical advantage, like in any other game.

* You can only build structures on flat land. You can build them atop hills if they have flat areas. You can't build structures on top of trees, roads, ruins or scorched earth - even if the land is flat - unless you bulldoze that terrain first.

* Structures cost money, obviously. Here, money is the only economic resource, and it accumulates automatically. You can increase the rate of $-per-second by building Supply Headquarters.

* Attacking costs energy, which also accumulates automatically. Each unit has a specific energy cost. You can increase the rate of energy-per-second accumulated by building Factories.

* Building is in real-time. Attacking, however, stops the "building mode" and enters "attack mode". Everything in progress during build mode stops while attacks are in progress. That's why I said it's sorta kinda maybe turn-based.

* You really only have three offensive weapons: ground-to-ground missiles, the titular Metal Marines (giant walking mechs), and an ICBM (intercontintental ballistic missile). The other three weapons are defensive: gun pods and land mines, to defend against opposing Metal Marines and Anti-Air missiles, to shoot down enemy missiles.

* The goal is to knock out the other person's bases. You start with three. The opponent can have any different number of bases.

* You do not have direct access to the enemy island. Only through attacking can you ever see what's on their island.

With this in mind, here's how a typical game goes:

1) You place your three bases in strategic places around your island, and then the match starts

2) You use your funds to build whatever (AA missiles, ground missiles, marines, factories; building a factory or two immediately is advised).

3) If you're not quick enough to build a missile pod and attack first, at some point your enemy will attack. Here's what happens during an attack: between one and four missile launches will occur (you can upgrade missiles so that two missiles launch from a single pod). They will make their way to the target island one after the other - not at the same time. If AA missiles don't knock 'em out of the air, each group of missiles that hits will damage the square on which it lands as well as the eight surrounding squares. Since you can never see what's on the other side, and supposedly neither can the CPU, the first salvo of missiles fired in each battle is kind of like a game of Battleship. The game shifts to a grid map when you're in attack mode, and the enemy island is completely devoid of any information - so at first, it's complete guesswork. It can be really frustrating if the enemy happens to hit the mark with the first salvo and you completely miss any and everything.

4) After the missile salvo, up to three Metal Marines can be dispatched to a single square on the grid. When they land, they can only attack structures within the surrounding eight squares - everything else is literally blacked out. The marines cannot be deployed on land that is occupied by an active structure; the square must be empty, scorched, or occupied by a destroyed building or ruins. From there, the Marines have 60 seconds to lay waste to whatever they see. So, if the enemy base lies on a hill surrounded by gun pods, and the only flat land to deploy the Marines leaves the enemy base out of the nine-square range, there's no way for you to slowly but surely take down the gun pods and make your way to the base - because the damn thing is off-screen. However, what this means is that if you want to take down a certain structure, you can sometimes avoid being double-teamed by heavy defenses if you aim it so that they're blacked out. If a base is surrounded by three gun pods, you can effectively take two of them out of the picture entirely... which is completely nonsensical because, hey, they're friggin' surrounding the damn base. But I suppose it provides another tactical consideration.

5) Game continues like that: build, fire missiles, land marines, rebuild. You can never occupy and overtake their island, because you can never actually get there. You can raze the hell out of their property, but you can't park your guys on their space and start building stuff.

It's eight bucks on Virtual Console. Should you get it? Don't ask me - I haven't finished reviewing it yet :P It's certainly weird and disjointed, though. I'll be writing this one up tonight.