Metal Arms: Glitch in the System - Video Game Review (Gamecube, Xbox, PS2, Xbox 360) - The New Order

Naked Crook

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System Game Review
By Naked Crook
The New Order Administrator

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, released in in 2003, is a 3rd person shooter. A very competent shooter in fact. This game has a rather unique storyline and is very satisfying in terms of how much action there is. The weapons are well designed and like-able and, aside from a few kinks, the game felt solid in terms of design. The environments are beautiful and well designed, and the weapons are exciting, and varied enough to keep the whole shooting experience a pleasure to play.

To help the readers evaluate how I feel about this game during the course of this review, I will use the star system. We will start at 5 stars. After each paragraph, you will see whether the game loses or gains stars based on how much I praise or trash the game. We will start with 5 stars. How I feel about the game is unrelated to the final score it is given at the end of the review.

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Alright, lets dive into the story. Metal arms takes place in a futuristic society of robots, who have, more or less, evolved and killed their creators. The main antagonist, named general Corrosive went haywire and decided to create a militia of evil minions to conquer this planet. This militia is composed of, yes, you guessed it, robots. These robots are called Mil bots or Mils. So...where does the player come in? Well...the player plays as a piece of scrap turned killing machine named Glitch. Found in what is essentially the ruins of a destroyed metropolis, you are repaired and rebuilt into a killing machine, hellbent on liberating iron Star from General Corrosive. Not an original story, but it is solid, and it gets the message across. As Glitch, you must blast your way through environment after environment, killing everything in your path, trekking down the long line of minions until you eventually get to General Corrosive. Like I said, not original, but the storyline works. So far so good. I did enjoy the storyline. The characters, and their plight, felt believable. The antagonist, well, I hated him. I hated him in the sense that he was well designed. He was a believable bad guy, and he was hate-able. Flawless character design in my opinion, when you can hate a character for what he does, and not what he lacks.

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The weapons...what can I say about one of the most imaginative set of weapons I have used? Each weapon had its own merits and uses. My personal favorite was the drilling laser. It is a weak weapon...but I simply love beam weapons. However, there were many other exciting guns such as the rivet gun. That is a beast and a half! I never had any problems killing anything when wielding the rivet gun. But, despite the power of the rivet gun, or my love affair with lasers, nothing beat the control tether. I lost count of how many times I took control of an enemy and just navigated them off a cliff for a good laugh. All in all, the tools of destruction available at your disposal will keep you interested.

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The audio track for the game was decent. It wasn't spectacular, but the music was good enough to add that extra bit of emotion to the game. This could have been one of the areas the game could have been improved. Now don't get me wrong, there were a few audio tracks that were excellent, but generally, the audio of the game was overlooked.

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The controls on this game were pretty good. I found myself at times, even with the aim assist, struggling to target enemies. Between running around and dodging enemy fire, and the enemies moving, I found myself missing shots more often then landing shots. Although this wasn't a big problem, I found myself running low on ammo from time to time. In spite of this, the core game play did not suffer. I for one have always been a fan of just...randomly shooting. It gives the game that mindless carnage feel, an excellent contrast to a game about bland machines. By no means were the characters bland mind you, this was just a compare and contrast statement.

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The level design in this game was actually very well done. Each area was unique. Never did I feel like the game was repetitive, nor was I bored with the levels. There was plenty of room to move around, and good areas to take cover. The environments were also varied. There were some interior levels and some exterior levels. Additionally, the level design fit with the ambiance of your surroundings. Interior levels were metallic looking, which is what would be expected from a race of machines. The environments were streamlined and well planned. Clearly, the designers took great care into making this a believable world.

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When it comes to a games graphics, I usually judge the graphics system, not the graphics as a whole. In other words, I do not compare and judge the graphics to games of today, rather, I judge how well the graphics have been implemented. As far as Metal arms is concerned, I did not notice any tearing or other graphical problems. The rendering was very solid and well done, and the use of graphics enhancements, like lighting effects, was outstanding. Although I do not like to place emphasis on graphics in my review, I must say that for a game made in 2003, the graphics were very good. Graphics, in my opinion do not take away from a game, rather, they only add to it.

Lets break it down into score categories: