Pacific Rim blew me away, the game not so much

Recently I went to the cinema to see Pacific Rim, a film about a group of giant human piloted mechs known as Jaegers fighting against giant Kaiju ( monsters ). Now I wasn't expecting much as far a characters, acting and story; if I'm honest I was simply there to see some amazing visuals and cool fights. But the film really surprised me it actually had good acting and a main character that I genuinely began to care about, on top of that the visuals were better than any CGI that's come before it.

Now even as similar the film may be to a certain Japanese anime series from the 90's known as Evangelion, you can't really compare or knock it, because Evangelion has never seen Cinema release in the western world.

Now onto the game, its available for 800 MS points on Xbox arcade which equates to around £7.

The game works as a 1v1 fighting game akin to a PS2 title called "Destroy All Monsters". or many of the Godzilla games released in Japan.
Now the graphics in this game are not awful by any means for an Arcade game they're decent enough. Check out these screenshots.

The problem comes when you realise that the developer has spent more time on creating what can only be described as a farce of a story mode, rather than on the multiplayer aspect of the game which actually shows signs of a good game. Let me explain what I mean in more detail, for example the story mode has you playing as the Kaiju, and even pitting the Jaeger's against one another, this makes no sense at all and simply feels like a cheap way to extend the campaign.

Now the combat system the game employs at first may seems rather basic but it has a few neat features that add a decent amount of depth, for example, there are two basic attack buttons, a special attack and a block. This is all basic stuff. where the combat shines is each character has its own unique special move, can do dodges and rolls as well as charge up basic attacks for slower more powerful hits, this makes fighting a human opponent a decent amount of fun as you try too read their moves and it is genuinely satisfying when you manage to land your special attack and send your enemy flying through buildings and onto his ass.

What baffles me is that there's no 2v2 mode even though a scene in the film it supposedly follows has a tag team fight. The leveling up system and exp gain is simply a joke to be frank, the online match-up system works off a xp system meaning players that have no skill but have grinded can be pitted up against players much more skilled leading too frustration for the weaker player.



All in all the game is okay, its nothing special and I wouldn't recommend it unless your a really die hard fan of the film, if your just after a game where you play as a giant robot I would suggest looking into MechWarrior Online, Crome Hounds or Mechassult for original XBOX.