Metal Arms - Under-Appreciated For The Holidays?

Thanks to GamesDomain for their review of Metal Arms: Glitch In The System, as their take on Vivendi's multi-platform "robot-themed third-person shooter", released this week, echoes the conclusions of many other positive ratings in proclaiming: "it's a real shame that this game doesn't seem to have quite the attention it deserves." 1UP also comments on the title as "one of the best under-hyped games of the year", describing it as "Ratchet & Clank fused with Halo", but why has this Swingin' Ape-developed title got such a low profile - lack of advertising, choice of subject matter, too many games released at the same time?

Comments

Tell you why I'm not buying it

[MBraynard]

No Xbox Live support. Any game without multi-player has a very finite playtime- you can beat it a few times at best and your 50 is gone. But with other titles out there for Xbox, the playing time you have built in with XBL titles - Counter Strike, RainbowSix 6, Crimson Skies, etc -why waste the 50?

Saw the demo..bought the game

[bigman2003]

I got the demo for Metal Arms a few months ago in Xbox magazine. It had action, it was funny, looked good, and was easy to play. Somehow though all the magazines gave it like a 7.2 in their previews.

This time I ignored the ratings, and bought it on the day it came out.

It's a great game, lots of fun. I don't think it is earth-shattering, or life changing, but it really is fun. One of the best cameras on a 3rd person game that I have ever played. If nothing else, everyone should be looking at the camera, and trying to duplicate it. Countless 3rd person games have been ruined by a crappy camera (Rayman 3?!).

Right now though, Top Spin is in my Xbox- waiting for me to finish career mode, then I'll go back to Metal Arms.

I don't think that Metal Arms NEEDS Live support though- sometimes a good solid single player campaign is what I am looking for.

Re:Saw the demo..bought the game

[bigman2003]

Yes- I realize that the reviews are good- but the previews everywhere sucked. It seems like either the previewers didn't actually play the game, or they thought that they couldn't score it well, because there was no hype.

Now most of the reviews are pretty good-

The Holiday Downside

[Babbster]

Metal Arms seems like exactly the kind of game that should either receive major hype (something Vivendi isn't in a position to provide at the moment) or be released in the off-season. If this game were released just about anytime between April and August, it would get a heckuva lot more attention. It would probably even get better review scores since fewer good games would be competing during its release period.

Then again, there's the question of who will OWN Vivendi's game division this time next year. Maybe they decided to get it out ASAP in the hopes that it would make a chunk of change and stoke interest - and more importantly, bidding - again. It could be considered particularly important since Half-Life 2 and Starcraft: Ghost won't drop until next year.

Just saw a show on it

[Necroman]

G4TV did a half-hour segment talking about this game. It does seem really sweet.
The company that makes this game was founded back in 2000 by 3 guys that used to work at Midway (and had been for a while). They were doing arcade games and knew the market for them was dieing, so the took a leap of faith and started their own company. They then got the funding behind the project and just went to town.

It seems to follow most other basic FPSes out there are far as style, but they did it in an innovative way. They've got lots of different weapons and such (like 14 I think), and some really cool features for when you are going through the missions (being able to re-program enemy machines to fight along side you, or you can sneak up on other robots, and "jack-in" to them and have total control).

It looks pretty sweet, I think it would be a fun "party" type game, like TimeSplitters 2. Gamecube and X-Box have up to 4 person multiplayer, 2 person on PS2... not sure if you can link consoles together or not. They have all the different multiplayer modes that most of the other FPS console games have.