Futility, Thy Name is Video Game



I just finished the video game Robotech: Battlecry. It came out a few years back, and I would play it a little while and then put it down for months. It’s a pretty hard game. It has a few flaws, the most notable ones being bland landscapes and building designs, and a limited set of voice clips that your character can say, which makes him seem inordinately obsessed with the Zentradi education system. (“Time to take these guys to school!”) However, as a recreation of what combat in the Robotech universe would be like it’s great. There’s a good sense of speed, and the missile and gun targeting feels suitably chaotic. You can be chasing after a Zentradi  fighter pod in space, make a sharp turn and suddenly find yourself skimming the hull of a gigantic Zentradi battle cruiser while it’s main guns fire off into space ahead of you. You can fire a cloud of missiles and watch it collide with a cloud of missiles coming the other way. You can even use your gun to shoot missiles down.



But what I’d like to talk about is the story, which is split into five chapters. You play Jack Archer, a pilot for the RDF’s Wolf squadron. In Chapter 1 you fight in some of the battles you see during the first half of the Macross storyline, like the initial Zentradi sneak attack on Macross Island and Dolza’s fullscale assault on Earth. Chapters 2 and 3 are primarily focused on Jack patrolling the wasteland left after Dolza’s bombardment, with occasional crossovers with what we saw in the second half of the Macross storyline. In Chapter 4 the story moves to a time beyond the destruction of the SDF-1 and the death of Khyron, with a new Zentradi commander named Zeraal building an army at a hidden Zentradi city somewhere out in the desert. In the last chapter Jack takes the fight to this Zentradi city. After a frustrating level where you essentially have to choose the perfect cover each time you move or pay dearly, you track Zeraal to a Zentradi carrier crashed in city. As you approach, the carrier performs a space fold, transporting you and a good chunk of the city into orbit around Saturn. You fight Zeraal one on one and defeat him. For this you are rewarded with a final cut scene where you find out... Jack has been stranded in space, so he dies a horrible death, the only real question being whether hypothermia or asphyxia gets him first. Thank you, programmers of Robotech: Battlecry, thank you so freakin' much.

Posted: Mon - October 18, 2004 at      

©