Earthsiege2 Review

Explosions Rule!!!!!

Especially the explosions in this action packed game from Sierra. Gamers will no longer be bored with the bangs of old where the enemy starts to smoke and the just goes bang, the same way every time. Earthsiege2 brings a new element of reality to dynamic graphics. Now if you shoot an enemy in its arm, its arm will blow off, and won't just disappear when it hits the ground but rather stay there for you to trip over later. Parts flying everywhere, amazing fireballs and smoldering remnants of what used to be an enemy HERC all add to this game's realism. The sound is good, but the butt-kicking graphics outshine it so much that you barely notice the impressive audio.

Game play is excellent, especially with a joystick, but even with only a keyboard and mouse you can still get the hang of it pretty quickly. Basically you walk around in a big robot killing enemy robots and destroying their bases. This can get pretty tiring after a while so the good people of sierra decided to make the landscape some of the best ever, with inclines, hills, valleys, snow, lava and ruins of buildings to add to realism and allow those enemies to hide from your mighty wrath of destruction for as long as they can. Other than walking around in robots called HERCs, you can also fly around in the Razor. This aircraft makes the game much more interesting, however it does have it's limitations such as a very limited altitude and somewhat unrealistic control compared to a real airplane. The razor does however keep you in front of the screen for a lot longer than the game would otherwise.

Don't however buy this game with the expectation that it's going to be something new or revolutionary. It is just the latest in a long line of games where you control a two legged robot and go around annihilating other robots. For those of you who can't get enough of the idea that the future will be full of giant robot wars, this game is highly recommended due to it's superior graphics, sound and playability over the previous games in the same category. The only type of game that would make this field more popular and exciting would be one where you could control the Imperial Walkers and Mini-Walkers from Star Wars. How bout it all you game designers out there?

The game does have a plot which is hardly original. A race of intelligent robots, created by humans have turned against us and are trying to kill of the human race and rule the world. (Hmmm, let's see the Terminator movie maybe?) Come on, could there be a more generic plot? The video clips and dynamic graphics between missions do lend themselves to the plot. The opening scene is very impressive, however it does bear an eerie resemblance to the opening scene of the new movie Independence Day. A spaceship heading to earth from the moon deploying smaller ship's to attack the earth. That sentence could describe the movie or the game.

The real problem with this game is its erratic reliability. It will only run on Win95 which sucks since many people have not yet converted to the newer system. It also freezes up more often than games normally do. It is full of bugs which slow or completely stop the game. Even with the recommended system, not just the minimum requirements, you should still expect to be sitting in front of a screen that says Loading for as much as 5 minutes. Sierra's automated tech support is no help when the game freezes for no reason after being played for one hour. The only solution sometimes is to completely uninstall and reinstall the game which is very annoying.

Overall the game is good, but not amazing. It is not the type of game that you will talk about with your friends, stay up late playing, or even keep on your hard drive for more than a couple of weeks. If you can wait, wait and the price will go down.