Could have been better
One would think that the DS is probably going to be flooded with RTS games to take advantage of its touchscreen controls. It's however surprising that most strategy games in the DS is turn-based. Though games like Advance Wars succeeded on that particular genre, Robocalypse seems to want to have a piece of the pie and establish itself as an excellent RTS game.
The game starts off by giving you a cartoony video clip that will give you an idea on how and why the robots have gone amok etc. You will be then thrown in a well made tutorial informing you how to command your units and create buildings. Controlling your units is done by issuing "command flags". If you issue a defend command for example, a couple of your units will automatically defend that position. Same thing will happen if you issue a different command request. It usually works but the lack of capability to issue specific request to a single unit (with the exception of a few units like Heroes) can sometimes become a problem because half of the decision is going to be made by the computer's AI. Speaking of which, the AI isn't all that sharp and there will be times that you'll see them standing around while your base is being attacked just a few meters away from where they are standing. Resource gatherers however does a good job of automatically repairing damaged buildings and automatically switches back to their previous task of resource gathering when done. Same can also be said with medics that heals damaged units.
Base creation is also something that you do not have total control of because you can only build your base on predefined areas on the map. So if you're one of the guys that strategically places their buildings on specific areas on the map, well ... tough luck because the game will not let you do so. And although the developers might have a good reason for doing this. In my opinion its their way of making the AI know exactly where to attack. Which is in some way a form of cheating but makes the game a bit more challenging at the same time.
Graphics is okay, nothing spectacular. Everything is in 2d but you'll get the feeling that the game could have done a better job with the environment because it's already leaning towards the pixelated side. Sound effects is okay, kinda flat though. And you won't get any speech when you select your units, all you get is a pop-up balloon on top of their heads as they throw out (sometimes) funny one-liners etc. You'll get a couple of grunts like "aww" and a few warning sounds like "base is under attack" but there's only a handful of those that you'll hear in the game so its quite hard to feel immersed while playing.
Overall, I feel like this game could have been better ... well, a lot better. Yes it would have been a little bit tough to issue control per single unit but forcing the game to group units on its own is in my opinion a bad idea since it takes a good chunk of strategy out of the game. I often times feel like I only have half of the control over my units because the game takes control of other things. Add to that the not so impressive looking graphics and audio, you'll end up with a game that is good, but could have been better.
.:My reviews are only as good as everyone else's. Take every single one of them with a grain of salt:.