Withstands the test of time pretty well.

User Rating: 8 | Metal Fatigue PC
I'm not really a hardcore RTS player despite starting out on the original warcraft (not wc2) and earlier, on turn-based games (Empire Deluxe, the grandaddy of them all, no less); I simply haven't played that many games after the wave of C&C clones in the early 2000s. That said, Metal Fatigue is a pretty darn good RTS albeit with several glaring flaws.

Presentation-wise (sound, graphics, campaign, i.e. gameplay in general) I have little complaint, except that once again the AI has a huge leg-up over human players, being able to multitask between the 3 different terrain layers easily. Also, as mentioned in another review, the overly simplistic resource management (there's only 1 kind of resource, and it's pretty much infinite) means given a little time, any map can be dragged into a long drawn-out fight.

It's a shame though; I haven't had major issues with pathfinding, other than units getting in each others' way, and the abovementioned resource issue. There's a freewheeling skirmish mode where you can replay with and against numerous AI opponents and allies, as well as a multiplayer mode (can't wait to convert some friends over) which means replayability is high. You can't save skirmish mode games though (and probably not multiplayer ones either), which kinda sucks, because battles do tend to be of the long-drawn-out variety. Trust me: before mastering a game, most players tend to build up first, before attacking en mass, right? Problem is, building up also means the enemy has time to entrench himself as well, and in the case of AI opponents they'll also be sending steady streams of assault parties at you. It'll take a lot of time and luck to survive the unceasing onslaught and build a large enough force to bury the opposition.

The game seems to not handle mutlitasking though, even despite being a windows game; when I alt-tabbed out, I couldn't get back in. The game apparently belongs to the old-school generation of early windows games which locked you in fullscreen mode and presumed they had the run of your machine. Personally I've come to detest fullscreen games, I guess I'm used to multitasking so much.

We need more RTS games like this; the modular giant mecha aspect, that is. Even with all it's flaws, it's always a blast to watch the giant combots in action, even if grudgingly because it's the opposition tearing your base apart.