Close to being a good game..just missing a few pieces
This game is set far in the future, where war is rampant and tanks are made obsolete by giant walking robots with shield generators and big guns. The story takes place in a time where robots are trying to destroy humanity. The evil computer-controlled robots (called "cybrids") in the game are fighting for the master computer, called Prometheus. The humans must survive an enormous onslaught of these cybrids. They just barely escaped the first attack (hence Earthsiege *2*), and are falling. The cybrids are massing on the far side of the moon and are putting Earth under a sort of siege, and you must command one of your robots (called Hercs) and 3 squadmates to defend humanity.
Thats about all there is to the story.
The battle environments are sometimes interesting, but lacking any real detail other than a few huge machine-building-things sticking out of the ground. The game's terrain is quite low-res and the pixels are large enough to mistake them for some kind of dull tile floor. Environments hardly change, other than the brownish color for a temperate climate, red+black for a volcano environment, white+gray for snowy environment, dark grey for
lunar environment, etc. No trees, and only a few boring looking buildings.
Missions range from defending, attacking, scouting, and not much else, leading to major Earthsiege deja-vu (didn't I just defend that base in the LAST mission?). Hardly any voiceovers besides that of your squadmates, mixed with no "sudden" mission changes, and this game's missions can lose your interest quite quickly.
Other than that this game is AWESOME. The game provides a series of cool, powerful, and impressive weapons in the herc bay. Weapons have their own attributes, and are even produced realistically. Lasers range from 100gW to 500gW, autocannons range from 50 mm to 100mm, etc. Some weapons can do specialized things, such as electron flux. The electron flux isn't just a one-shot weapon. The player can hold down the firing trigger for an extended period and "click and drag" the weapon to destroy multiple targets in one salvo. Other weapons such as the Electromag-pulse fire two shots instead of one, and weapons such as the all-pwnz0r Plasma Cannon have the ability to track the target and destroy any small herc in one hit.
The gameplay is pretty slow until you meet an enemy herc. The sounds are awesome. Explosions are satisfyingly high base, the bullet against armor sound is quite realistic. Explosion graphics are cooler than many new games. Wait...the explosion GRAPHICS aren't good; the way the explosions are sequenced and the way the hercs break apart is cool. Blow the top off a herc, the missile pods and weapons fly in all directions, and the whole chassis catches fire violently. Blow the leg off of a herc, it falls to the ground, damaging itself severely, occasionally blowing up pieces of it's torso. Buildings explode into huge pieces with a pungent KA-KRAMM and catch on fire so impressively it would make James Bond jealous. This game goes for being immersive by sheer noise. And, depending on the size of your speakers, it works. You will be surrounded by kabooms, bullet sounds, and autocannons firing.
This game is pretty easy, until you get five enemies on you at once, in which you realize how fragile your herc really is. It has stability problems once and a while. This would be a totall addictive game, but it's lack of a good environment and a good story keeps it from being of interest for too long.