Last night I logged onto my XBox Live with the intent to download Torchlight. Upon visiting the XBox Live Marketplace I discovered they added a game from Konami based off the new movie "Battle: Los Angeles". Wow, I never saw this one coming I thought. So after checking out a few pics of it, I thought it looked decent and downloaded it for 800 points. Now im sure some of you might be asking why, because movie based games always suck. To those of you who say this, I would say to you that I disagree. In my nearly 30 years of gaming, I have played numerous good movie based games. From Raiders of the Lost Ark on the 2600, to Golden Eye on the N64, and EAs Lord of the Rings titles, I have had lots of great experience with games based off movies. Heck, I even liked Iron Man on 360 and PS3. While it wasn't the best game, I found a lot of fun in it once I adjusted to the controls. Anyway, back to this game....After about 30 minutes my game finished downloading. It was only around 1GB, so I wasn't expecting some massive game with flashy graphics. When I first booted it up I watched a poorly done intro set up in a comic book style. While the art wasn't bad, I found it boring, and the style very unfitting to the actual game. Needless to say, I found myself skipping all these throughout the game. All I needed to know about the story was that aliens were invading LA, and that I had to kill them. When the game started up, I thought that it wasn't that bad for what it was, but not that good either. That thought lasted for about 45 minutes when the end credits rolled. Yup, it was only 45 minutes long. It felt like it was over before it started. Ok, so its a very very short game, but what does it have to offer? Lets see...
Lets start off with the weapons and what this game gives you. First off you have your standard assault rifle which has good range, shoots fast, but it a little weak. Second you've got a sniper rifle which is very strong. Finally there is the rocket launcher which does just what the name implies. Yup, thats it, the game has just 3 main weapons. No pistols, no alien weapons. For sub weapons you get only hand grenades. Using these pretty much sucks though. No matter how many I threw, I rarely was able to get the right angle. Other then the weapons mentioned, you can also hop on a gun turret in about 2 or 3 sections. I usually like turret type missions, but these were boring.
What about the aliens you fight? Well those seem even more limited then your methods of attack. First off you have your typical grunt types that attack in waves. These things seem brain dead and usually stand there and let you shoot them. The second type of alien you fight is one on a gun turret type vehicle. These are fairly rare and don't pose much of a threat. Finally you fight some small assault type ships. Its best to use a rocket launcher, or gun turret on these.
Graphically the game is pretty average. Nothing too bad, but nothing too good either. The worst thing about the graphics is the lack of variety in everything. I understand the game is set in a city, but a little change of environment would be nice. I also should comment on the grenade throw animation. Lets just say that it is laughable at best.
Sounds are pretty typical. Nothing too bad, but nothing that really stands out too much either. Some of the voice acting is decent, but that is about it.
Like I stated, the game is only about 45 minutes long. I beat it through on normal without even dying once, so the game is also easy as well. I haven't tried it on hard yet, but I might do a thrid play-through once im done beating it on easy. Yes, im doing a second play-through on easy since when I beat it on normal it didn't give me the achievement for beating it on easy. Was this the developers way of trying to artificially increase the games length? If so its a little lame.
Now I would like to talk about the games multiplayer.....wait a minute, there is no multiplayer. What an insult...the least they could have done was tacked on a multiplayer mode with 3 or 4 maps.
In the end I would advise you to stay away from this game. Its too short, its boring, and is nothing more then an attempt to make a quick buck by Konami. The only people who should be wasting $10 on this game are those who must get achievements. There's only 200, but their easy to get, and you should be able to get them all in under 3 hours.
