Metal Arms: Glitch In The System Review

What do you get this generation when you cross Metroid Prime, Armored Core and Halo? Well if you don’t know the answer, it’s really quite simple. It’s Metal Arms: Glitch In the System. If you don’t get it, here’s the explanation. Metal Arms is about a civilization of different mechs, droids and robots, hence Armored Core. You take on the role of Glitch, a special droid who uses various arm cannon type weapons, Metroid Prime’s connection. Then throughout the game you have access to the use of various military-esque attack vehicles, our Halo. So if you’ve ever wondered what a game would be like with elements of those three, here’s a perfect example.

Once again, you are Glitch. Glitch is found buried on the surface of planet Iron Star as rebel droids are performing night time reconnaissance. They have their precious dog droid with them that sniffs you out. You are dug out of the ground, and they notice the strange symbolism etched on your body. You are then taken to the Rebel Command Center where you are lying on a table of some sort, listening to various officers of the droid army speaking about you. It is rather comical too, because the droid mechanic Krunk is asked if he was able to fix you. This is where plenty of the game’s naughty language comes in. But since this is rated teen, the words that would’ve been said are “bleeped” out. Krunk likes to drop the ‘f word’ on you a couple times during that cutscene, and he will say plenty more before your adventure is complete.

Colonel Alloy is the main commander of the droid army, and it is he whom Glitch reports to during the first mission. There is a war taking place on Iron Star, and it’s between the Rebel Droids and the dreaded Mil Army. What started this war was massive failure during an experiment to further enhance the programming of future droids. Dr. Exovolt was the scientist behind the project, and the fruits of his labor yielded a power hungry and droid hating Mil in General Corrosive. Just think something along the lines of true Ganon from Ocarina of Time in mech form and you have Corrosive. When Corrosive was created and activated, he destroyed Exovolt’s entire lab and took control of the Mil army by himself. With his army, he wishes to wipe out the poor little droid race.

The game actually looks pretty fantastic to present this entire deal. Metal Arms does an impressive job of pushing the GameCube to its limits in displaying what it does with planet Iron Star. All the droids and Mils you encounter look very well-detailed and are animated beautifully. Now sadly there isn’t the biggest variety in the different types of droids and Mils, but it’s really not that noticeable since it’s too much fun blowing them to pieces. Nevertheless, all the characters you encounter are designed well and look like they could easily be droids or robots in the real world. Even more impressive is how well the weapons are designed. You have anything from a basic mining laser to the big man rocket launcher and the very enjoyable scatter blaster. Each weapon is truly unique, and they were designed to reflect that. No weapon looks alike, and you will see that when they are equipped on yourself and your enemies.

Environments on Iron Star look very good as well. Everything on the planet is more or less driven by machinery of some sort. Then since it’s completely inhabited by robots of some kind, the architectural feel reflects that. It’s very futuristic, but nothing that will make you think you’re watching Star Wars or something like that. It’s a very laid back atmosphere almost, and does a good job showing just how simplistic a life like that can be. You will encounter the isolated metro of Droid Town, as well as all the various strongholds of the Mil army. There is also a huge wasteland on the planet, which sort of connects parts of the entire planet together.

The only minor disappointment here is the frame rate, because it can suffer at times. If you are in a heated battle with any kind of the Mil army, expect to see some slowdown. It generally never gets bad enough to affect the control of the game, but there were a couple instances when got a little tough. Thankfully it doesn’t happen often, nor even all the time when in large battles. But it does happen unfortunately, and at times when you don’t really need it to, but it’s something that can be looked past.

Metal Arms is one heck of a fun game to play as well, which is where it shines the most. There is a plethora of different options when doing battle, and your strategy may very well have to change just as much. You will have primary and secondary weapons at your disposal, and they all have their moments of entertaining use. Glitch holds his primary weapons on his right arm using all kinds of different ones. This includes a ripper that can cut through cable and metal, a control tether which allows you to take over enemy units and even a spew weapon which is more or less an automatic rifle. Then you have your secondary cache, which Glitch uses his left arm to throw. These include your core charges (grenades), EMP grenades to disable enemies and recruiter grenades that reprogram enemies to fight alongside you. There are others of course, and they all of their uses depending upon your strategy.