Giant robots have all the fun...

Gunmetal, along with Vicious Cycle's upcoming Robotech game, is sending us one clear message: there's absolutely no shortage of games involving giant transforming robots in development for the Xbox. Here's to this trend continuing. In any event, Gunmetal is Rage's latest, easily most noteworthy known Xbox project, and we recently got our hands on a playable build. It's built, as you know, around the enticing notion of transforming mecha, and Rage seems to be pulling the game's concept off in a pretty interesting manner. The concept involves positioning your combination mech/jet, basically, in something of a "striker" role throughout most of the game's missions, having you take on entire platoons of enemy gear unaided. Not other mechs, mind you, but mostly carriers, flying battle pods, tankoids, stationary emplacements, and even puny infantrymen. The fact that your mech is light-years ahead of your enemy's military tech is driven home more or less immediately, however, so you probably won't be that intimidated by the odds.

The form you're in, as you'd imagine, determines both how you move and what you shoot. In theory, the robot form is better suited to battles in which you have to deal with relatively stationary ground-based targets, while the jet form is used to dispatch fast-moving airborne threats. In practice, though, it seems like you'll be able to handle any enemies that come your way in both forms, provided you have the right weapon sets equipped. The missions will certainly keep you on your toes in this regard, as the types of situations they throw at you seem nicely varied. One, for instance, presents you with the task of defending against a three-pronged assault on some friendly settlements, all of which are placed in different portions of the mission map. One group consisted mostly of ground troops, with another being mainly air-based, and the third a bit of a mix of the two. Dealing with the situation effectively means not only being quick enough on the afterburner to reach each distant assault as it's happening, but also having a varied-enough weapon set to take on the actual attackers. The missions all seem to have one thing in common, though: most of them take place on some fairly nice-sized maps. Each mission area seems quite nicely realized, from a geographical standpoint, replete with hills, valleys, bodies of water, and all sorts of vegetation. In the case of trees, you'll get to see the effect of your giant metal frame's interactions with them--they'll fall under your step and char when caught in the wake of your napalm. The same can also be said about the game's urban environments, as you'll crush weak city walls under your heel and bring down some pretty huge compounds with your shellfire.

...and when they can turn into jetplanes, it just seems even less fair.

Most of the time, though, it won't be in your best interests to rain hell on your surroundings. Rage has played up the "mech as defender" concept, after all, so it's the very opposite that you'll often be shooting for. Though many missions have you launching strikes on enemy compounds and units, it seems likely that more of them will have you escorting otherwise-defenseless convoys through enemy-occupied areas and protecting friendly settlements from attack. Some missions will even have you doing both at once. Everything generally feels like more of a series of prolonged skirmishes as a result, rather than an actual drawn-out battle. Some stages come pretty close--one of the missions involves a series of strikes on enemy communications emplacements that devolves into a fairly reckless assault on a fully defended base, for instance--but from what we've seen, moments like that seem fleeting. That isn't to say that the pacing for the battles isn't enjoyable, but some players simply prefer shorter, more intense scenarios, possibly with friendly units playing an increased role.