Earthsiege 2 Review

Even if the term "Cybrid" makes you break out into a rash, it's hard to go terribly wrong with big, battling hunks of walking metal that occasionally get reduced to big, burning hunks of twisted metal. (The sight of a flaming hulk in this game is surpassed in grim beauty only by the sound the flames make.) The terrain and buildings in this battle-mech sim are presented courtesy of the Sierra/Dynamix' 3DSpace engine, and look just as good as the much-hailed Silent Thunder which uses the same scheme. With graphics quite a bit cleaner than those in, say, MechWarrior 2, ES2's 50-plus missions are just that crucial bit more challenging, and the addition of an air-capable HERC called the "A-10" - er, ahem, I mean the "Razor," - makes the overall combat action all the more hectic. Like in the first game, players can outfit and customize their HERC units between battles, and those missions involving Razor air strikes are tantamount to pretty decent little flight sims in their own right. If I were forced at gunpoint to point newbies toward one battle-mech game, EarthSiege 2 would probably be the one.