Armada: Review

Well, know its time to review Asteroids... I mean Armada. Actually, one of my favorite games was Asteroids on the Playstation, so the similarities are actually quite welcome for me. Now I have tried this with a friend, so my rating will be based on its muliplayer as well as its single player.

Gameplay:

Armada has an interesting control scheme that you may hate. You point the ship with analog stick and accelerate with the triggers. The ship will turn until it is facing the direction you are pointing. It doesn't sound that bad, but it certainly takes getting used to. You can talk to other ships and collect objects with your scanner. The different starting ships all have unique weapon systems, and each comes with an ammo based bomb and shield system. To play the game, you fly into space and shoot the enemy until they die. 

There isn't much of a story, but you take missions that help the human cause against the Armada. These mostly amount to either fetch quests, delivery quests, or kill quests. None of these are particularly compelling. You can also take escort missions from transports you bump into in space as well as team up with computer controlled allies. These break up the monotony and are a decent source of cash. It's all good, if rather shallow, space blasting fun.

Design:

Armada actually works on a galactic hub world design. You travel around the solar system shooting things, with planets and space stations being the "towns". The worlds are not very big when you visit them and station shops are little more than a menu screen. But outer space is gigantic. The game comes with a X Y coordinate system and as yet I haven't hit its limits. Space feels big, with warp drives giving the stars that cool stretch effect. Ship design is also good, with it being immediately clear, both visually and on the radar, how many ships you got on you and which ones are bad news. And all the space battles feel nicely chaotic, with lots of blasts flying around and ships to kill. 

Multiplayer:

Now, Armada is a particularly lonely single player experience. NPCs talk, but they don't have much to say and your actions tend to lack context. Not much drives the single player mode. But Armada boasts a very friendly and fun multiplayer experience. The game is fast paced, hectic and relatively simple. If you have friends who find they like this game, it can lead to some fun times. You'll fly around, blast stuff and just have a good laugh while doing so. 

Multiplayer also comes with some smart features. Money is more common since it has to be split. The screen does not go into split screen, which would not work for smaller screens at all. You can also save particular characters do different VMUs, allowing your friends to keep there character on their drive. 4 player support is a given. 

Overview:

As a single player experience, Armada is somewhat lacking. It isn't that its bad, there just isn't much to it. Missions are repetitive and there just isn't a lot of depth to it. But as a multiplayer experience, its hectic and silly. So its definitely a game to seek out if you wanna pow-wow with your pals around the dreamcast. Otherwise, not a must own. 

6.5/10

COG:

Animal crossing be going fine. Club LOL finally opened, so now I can see KK Slider. Also, shampoddle is opening soon and I finally added a second level to my house. Also, I won the bug catching tournament. 

DANCE!

I am convinced he ate the bugs you gave him.