Have you ever played a game that is so awful, it made you take to the internet, create a GameSpot account and then spend an hour and a half writing a review about just how awful the game is? Well that's what happened and that's what this is. If you've had the pleasure of playing Robot Warlords before, I'm sure this review will be everything you expect. If not, then I hope this review puts you off completely and you don't dirty your PlayStation 2 with the STD of a game that is Robot Warlords.
Growing up I didn't get many games and I was fine with that. I understood that new video games were expensive, and appreciated the ones I already had, but when my parents did get me something new to play, I would definitely make sure they got their money's worth. Robot Warlords was the exception to this. Even as a child who often enjoyed bad games (Crazy Frog Racer kept me occupied for far too long), I knew this game was hot garbage that didn't deserve to rest in my PlayStation's disk tray.
After roughly 15 years, I found the game on eBay at an incredibly low price. I decided to bid, more to see how cheap I could get a game for rather than wanting the game itself and I manged to win the auction for 6 whole pence. This is 6 pence I could have spent on penny sweets or donated to a charity pot in my local shop. Hell, I could have thrown the six pence at some ducks and still felt like a better person than those who decided they would make people pay good money for a retail copy of this steaming piece of waste.
How it plays
I did not play Robot Warlords for the amount of time I would normally put into a new game, even one I didn't initially like. I'll be honest, I'd be quite unlikely to trust a review on a game if the author had only put in an hour or so into actually playing it, but I simply could not continue. Life is too short. The fact that I have spent more time writing out this review then actually playing the damn game speaks volumes for my opinions on the travesty that is Robot Warlords.
Firstly, you're going to need the patience of someone who doesn't already know how bad this game is just to get to the first actual gameplay portion. There's a lot of exposition here, delivered slowly by far too many characters which unfortunately, cannot be skipped. This is made all the more worse by the quality of the voice acting and the fact that I couldn't care less about what's being discussed. Honestly, this is not an interesting story, nor is anything that the characters talk about gripping in any way. Chances are, like me, you bought the game to gun down giant mechs with your own, equally bad-ass, giant mech and not to listen to minutes on minutes of bad voice acting.
The gameplay itself is that of a turn-based, RPG. A bad turn-based RPG. When you eventually get to actually play Robot Warlords, you're going to miss the hell out of that 20 second loop of drum machine and those lengthy conversations because the gameplay is convoluted as all hell. Almost instantly I was confused by my range of different movement options and weapons. When I did move and attack an enemy mech, I still had no idea what had just happened.
The first mission tasks you with destroying 3 enemy mechs within 10 turns. Nothing that sounds too difficult for a squad of 5 soldiers. How wrong I was in this assumption. At no point did I know how much damage my 'troops' were taking and lord knows I couldn't figure out how much damage I was dealing to the enemy mechs. Each body part of each mech seems to have its own HP and trying to figure out which body part I was aiming for proved to be impossible. At one point I believe I accidentally managed to 'lay smoke' in front of myself and then proceed to miss the enemy with my attack because I was standing in my own bloody smoke. Needless to say, I did not manage to beat the first mission on my first try. Nor my second or third. By this time I had already rage-quit like a 13 year-old and taken to the internet to bitch and moan.
I'm not an avid fan of turn-based RPGs but I've played a fair few and I can say without a doubt that Robot Warlords is the worst I've encountered so far.
How it looks
Robot Warlords is by no means the worst looking game on the PlayStation 2 but it wouldn't be a massive shock to learn that the budget for visuals was below £200. The game mixes static photos with small, fairly low quality drawings of characters and some pretty budget animation.
The scenes featuring the character dialogue bring home just how budget this title is. Characters are only shown in a small portrait that is seemingly drawn by someone starting out in the business, whilst their text box are the main focus of what's being shown on screen. At no point should a 'good' game make players spend this long looking at text boxes over a static background image. The only saving grace in regards to the visuals of these scenes are the character's mouths when it's their turn to speak. I'd like to call it lip syncing, however it looks more like each character is trying their hardest to imitate a goldfish and a particularly slow one at that.
During gameplay, the environments are dull, the colour pallets consist of far too much brown and greys, the HUD is simply too much and the cut scenes between turns are laughable, with big, formidable mechs skating into position slower than my Nan can do a weekly food shop. Being a turn-based RPG with a grid layout to show where and how far each mech can move, the fact that the entire screen blurs with each movement on the grid speaks volumes for the graphical quality of the game.
After each 'move' of a character, there will be an animation that runs for far to long, showing the movements or attacks of both your enemies and your own mechs. Although pretty basic, I must say I have seen far worse animation in a PlayStation 2 game. This does not mean that the animation is by any means a positive point for the game. Each animation is just long enough for you to want it to be over and get back to the gameplay, which you then remember is equally as bad.
How it sounds
The first thing I want to talk about when addressing how the game sounds is the voice acting. This game features some truly god-awful line readings from obviously bored voice actors, phoning in a performance for what I imagine was an easy paycheck. This doesn't surprise me in the least and I suppose we should just be glad DaZZ forked out what was probably at least 30% of their budget on voice acting at all. The biggest issue with the voice acting I had was that for a game set in Japan, with all the dialogue in the beginning of the game (I didn't get much further than that) being between Japanese men and woman, why the hell do they all have upper-class, British accents? Was it really that hard to find some voice actors who could have suited the roles just a tad better? Trying to take something seriously from what appears to be a 80-90 year old Japanese businessman, who owns the voice of a 35 year-old pulled straight out of a film about British World War 2 pilots is rather difficult.
The game's music isn't totally abysmal but it's nothing to write home about. All in all, it's just 'eurgh' and it gets more 'eurgh' the longer you play. During the more speech-heavy scenes, the music is bland, repetitive and sometimes plays in loops that end so abruptly, it wouldn't be surprising to find out the designers acquired them after a long and tough five minute google search of 'royalty free music'. To put my opinion of the soundtrack simply, there is too much damn drum machine. Far too much. The music is that of a fast paced, action packed game when in reality you're playing a turn-based strategy that often takes consideration when planning your next move.
Finally the sounds during gameplay are genuinely difficult to listen to. After choosing what you want your mech to do, there is a long scene of it either moving or attacking an enemy. I recommend muting the television or humming loudly to yourself during these parts. Listening to the far-to-loud machine gun fire and scraping of metal when the mechs move is enough to give a migraine. After the scene you are given 1 or 2 seconds of glorious silence until being thrown back into the maniacal drum beat of an awful, PlayStation 2 mech game.
Conclusion
In conclusion, do not buy this game or even accept it as a gift. If someone tries to give you Robot Warlords, they do not have your best interests at heart. Chances are they're probably trying to passive-aggressively punish you for something you may or may not have done several years ago.
I received this game when I was a 6 or 7 year-old boy and even then I knew what this was. A budget title designed solely to attract the parents of young children and make them think they're getting something their child will like whilst also saving £15. I've never played a game with a Midas Interactive logo on it and I've never even heard of the game company 'DaZZ' (Neither has Wikipedia apparently) but their names will be burned into my subconscious simply to ensure I never buy another one of their products again.