Good stuff, and could be better – Giant Fighting Robots Review

I've been waiting for a really good (ie. realistic) combat sim for a while. There have been so many sims out there, but the combat ones are all too arcade like and Laminar's, while great on the realism factor, don't contain any combat. So finally they've made a good combat sim. It's unfortunate it's not a flight sim, but I love mech sims too, so I'm still happy with it. They've done a great job with the realism of the simulation of the mechs. Customization, audio, and general feel of the mechs in motion are all great. So far just one gameplay feature I'd like to see - the ability to fire multiple weapon types at the same time. I used to love being able to do that in Mechwarrior - line up the enemy, and just unload in one giant barrage, causing huge damage (assuming I hit). Actually one other thing that would be cool is haivng a voiceover indicating the status/damage of the mech (heh, always liked that female system voice from Mechwarrior). But that would just be earcandy - not as important to me as firing multiple weapon types. The area where the game is lacking is the environments and the missions. Environments are pretty much barren - just terrain. No buildings (that I've seen anyway), etc. Missions are pretty simplistic - not much originality (just kill the enemy) or story. Also, other than multiplayer, there's no other gameplay type - it's either campaign or multiplayer. Some kind of pick-up battle would be nice that involves taking out a handful of mechs. Or even an endless assault to see how long you can last, or perhaps a base attack battle in which you have to attack the enemy base or defend your own. Lots of options are possible. Finally, some music would be a great addition as well. But at least you can play your own music. PS. I just used the flamethrower weapon, and LOL. It's a powerful weapon, but it looks really cheesy - just a stream of sprite based fireballs being thrown out. Actually, to be honest, the game's graphics in general are a bit cheesy - the mechs and effects. Not the stuff we're used to in Mechwarrior, Mech Assault, etc (or even X-plane for that matter). But the game is still great simply because of the realism. If a few of the points I made are fixed in future updates, I'd gladly update my rating to 5 stars.
Review by artfoundry on Giant Fighting Robots.