Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
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| Metal Arms: Glitch in the System | |
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| Developer(s) | Swingin' Ape Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Vivendi Universal |
| Release date(s) | November 18, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Third-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen |
| Platform(s) | GameCube, Xbox, PS2 |
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is a third-person shooter developed by Swingin' Ape Studios. It was published by Vivendi Universal in November 2003 for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Planet Iron Star. Thought to have built from debris and "space crap", by a mysterious race called the Morbots. Little is known about them except they live in Iron Star's core, where they give off the energy consumed by the planet's inhabitants. None dare enter the Morbot lair, for fear of death. The inhabitants consumed the planet's plentiful ore and prospered.
Dr. Exavolt wanted to push droid technology further, but his experiment went terribly wrong, and a sadistic military bot named General Corrosive emerged. He built a robotic race called the Mils and sent the droid's once peaceful nation into a tailspin of terror and chaos. Many droids were enslaved and those who resisted were immediately killed and recycled.
Until one day, a droid architect by the name of Colonel Alloy carved out one last vestige of hope and built Droid Town. Droid town was unknown to the Mils and is the center of the Droid Rebellion, calling on all willing and able droids, before It's too late.
One day, two droids were searching the ruins with there dog, Zobby, and found a strange robot, who appeared to be a morbot to the player. They took him back to droid town and krunk managed to reactiveate him in which he told the droids that his name was Glitch, then the droids played Glitch a video showing the history the war.
The droids got wind that the mils had entered the mines and were bustin' through to droid town, in which Glitch and the other two droids, Hosed and Screwed, were sent down the mines to get rid of them, after the battle, the mils manages to break into droid town, but the droids made sure no mil got out alive, but one did - Vlax a mil grunt.
After getting word that Vlax knew the location of droid town, Krunk, Zobby and Glitch hopped into the RAT and went after him only to end up in a mysterious scrap yard full of zombiebots. After trying to find Vlax, Glitch comes across Moser, a nearly-broken old robot seeking help who knew how to get to the mil base that Vlax was in. He offered Glitch help and they were on there way. But they soon end up facing off against the Zombiebot king.
After they had got to the base, Glitch sent Moser to droid town to get fixed up and Moser gave Glitch his rivet gun in return. Glitch broke into the compound and blew up the com-arrays so that Vlax couldn't give General Corrosive the location of droid town, in which Vlax fled.
Glitch soon received word that Krunk had been captured and Vlax had taken his Morbot gateway chip. After freeing Krunk, Krunk told Glitch about some kind of space station, Krunk, Zobby and Glitch were off again after Vlax. After cornering Vlax and defeating him they got the chip back and the 3 headed back to droid town.
Glitch then entered the Morbot regin so he could get through it and to the enemy. After a battle with the Mils that were down there and getting some what lost, Glitch find Slosh, a robot with a few loose bolts and rather jumpy, he offers Glitch help to find his way out if Glitch frees him. After that, Slosh gives Glitch his toaster (flamethrower) and a few magma bombs. Glitch enters Mil city and meets agent Shhh who enforms him that the Mils are making Mils that look like droids to find droid town. Glitch infiltrates the Spy factory, posing as a Mil droid spy, and aquires the mil operating chip, which he then gives to 2 droids disgiusted as Mils.
He enters the Ruins to reasemble Agent Goth, who was found and deasembled by the Mils, to get information that Goth has. Afte reasembling him and getting the information that Dr. Exavolt was indeed alive and that the mils were holding him captive, Goth gave Glitch a servo upgrade and Glitch was on his way into Mil city again.
After a feirce battle through the city and escaping with Dr. Exavolt, Glitch brought him back to droid town, only to find that what happened on that fatal day was no accident and that Exavolt had deliberatly created General Corrosive as his puppet and faked his own death. Exavolt then told General Corrosive directly the location of droid town and a huge invasion force started to attack the town, after Glitch disposed of the force, a trooper landed on him, knocking him out and took him to the arena.
There he took part in 3 battles, winning them all, but on the forth battle, he faced of against General Corrosive himself, without any weapons, so he cleverly used the wrench to dismantle himself and make everyone think he was dead, only to be dumped outside the arena and reasembled himself again.
Colonel Alloy enformed Glitch that Exavolt had taken Zobby and was taking him to a rocket to take off to the space station Krunk had mentioned. Glitch raced to the rocket, sneaked on and took off to the space station.
After he got onto the space station, he fought an onslaught of Mils, and finally came to a big room, only to be traped by Corrosive himself. Around the room were some chips used to control the General directly, after collecting them and evading the General, he went up to a small room Zobby was being held in and the General's override control console was in. After he took direct control of Corrosive (whom the player gets to control and fight loads of Mils without the fear of dying) and used Corrosive to blow the space station to hell, Glitch escaped the space station with Zobby in an escape pod thinking that the General had been defeated.
They landed in the Wasteland again, to find General Corrosive badly damaged an outraged, the final battle between Corrosive and Glitch took place. With a few holes blow away in Corrosive's armour due to the enormous blast from the space station, Glitch managed to defeat the General and leave him as scrap metal. He returned to droid town as a big celebration went on. The player then sees Exavolt (unbeknownst to the droids is still alive) in an escape pod, plotting his revenge against Glitch.
[edit] Single Player
Primary gameplay consists of third person run-and-gun battles, in the which the player takes control of Glitch. The single player mode is 42 missions long. In most missions, the player must make his way through a 3D environment from one point to the other. He must usually fight a large number of AI opponents along the way, making use of his arsenal, available vehicles and his control of an enemy character, where given. A small number of missions vary from this standard and take the form of an on-rails shooting gallery, driving challenge or boss battle. The game features 17 weapons, including a hacking ability that allows Glitch to take over enemy robots, and 3 vehicles.
[edit] Multiplayer
Up to four players can compete in multiplayer mode in the Xbox and Gamecube versions of the game, but this number is limited to two in the PS2 version. The PS2 version contains two exclusive maps, however. There are seven modes of play: Bot Brawl (Deathmatch), Team Bot Brawl, Possession Melee (Where all players are given Recruiter Grenades and Control Tethers to possess other bots to fight for you), King Of THe Hill (Players fight for control of a specific point on the map), Moving Hill (Same as King Of The Hill, but the point moves), Tag (Played like a normal game of tag - to tag someone when you are tagged you kill them, tagging them and untagging you), and Reverse Tag (Where the objective is to become tagged and stay that way for as long as possible). You can also create new multiplayer modes and save them to your profile. AI-controlled bots can be optionally switched on or off, but these are not like normal players - they are merely enemies from single player placed in the map to create havoc - they do not have a kill total and players do not gain points for killing them. All weapons (excluding the spanner) and vehicles are available in Multiplayer. The game begins with 4 levels unlocked, with the rest unlocked by finding secret chips in the single player mode.
[edit] Platform variations
- The XBox version supports Dolby Digital sound and multiplayer for 2 to 4 people.
- The Gamecube version supports Dolby Prologic II, progressive scan and multiplayer for 2 to 4 people.
- The PS2 version supports multiplayer for 2 people only.
[edit] Enemies
There are several enemies in the game, being either Mils, Junkbots, creatures, and in one case, a droid. All Mils will start carrying shields after the Morbot City levels, though not every single enemy unit will wear them. Most enemies have various types and will be discused at greater length below.
Grunt - The grunts are your most common enemy, and throughout the game wield every weapon that you do excluding the control teather, slingshot, scatter blaster, and ripper, along with all secondary weapons excluding the coring charge. To add even further to their variety, their weapons upgrade just like yours. The varieties are as follows: blue use mining laser, red (the most common of all) use the SPEW and later, the coring charge, etc. All portions of this mil may be shot off or disabled, a common strategy being that a player disables the coring charge hand (though not destroying it) and goading the grunt to throw a coring charge to its feet and destroying it and destroying or damaging nearby enemies.
Elite Guard - Although the instruction booklet would have you believe that these are an offshoot of the Grunts, they bear no resemblance to them, an instead look, though not necessarily fight, much more like a Titan. Guards have a huge stamina, the first one ought possibly being a fully upgraded version to make it more like a boss battle, and are equal to if not more powerful than a Titan. They wield a halbierd that they swing in a constant back and forth motion if the player gets to close. Their other weapon is a shotgun laser mounted on top of the halbierd that it shoots while constantly running towards the closest target. There is a blind spot on its rampage path where it will swing its taff even while the player is too far away to hit though this is practically impossible to maintain seeing as how it rushes towards you at a speed greater than your own. Like a grunt the body parts can be diabled but require much skill to to do so. Another tactic is to disable a guard with a EMP grenade and then take it over with the control tether.
Titan - The Titan is the commando of the Mils' army, using two arm attacthed, fully upgraded spews, a shoulder mounted rocket laucher that will eventually upgrade to shoot a rocket that splits into four, and a shockwave attack by stomping the ground. The best strategy while dealing with these guys is to try and disable or destroy the guns or rocket launcher and then either ignore it or destroy it fully. You can also destroy both legs and 'fuse' the top half of the Titan to the ground meaning that the Titan can essentially have all armaments removed without actually killing it. Although the Titans arm cannons overheat when controlled by the player, it seems that that is not the case as an enemy. Titans, like guards, are a prime target for recruter grenades, as they make for very powerful allies.
Jump Trooper - Though similar in health to a Grunt, the Troopers can provide to be diffiult targets as they fly through the air. They have three distinct attacks, either slicing you with bayonets on their wrists, shooting you with explosive green plasma blasts from the ground or air, and while in the air dive bombing the player and attempting to slice the player in half for heavy dammage. The weapons have no noticeable changes making the upgrades it receives only endurance and attack power.
Predator and Snerq - There are two very different forms of this Mil, one a single piece flying robot that shoots lasers at you. The Snerq is a small quick machine making them somewhat hard to to shoot. The Predator is a four armed flying robot that can shoot either lasers or a barrage of orange explosive plasma. Both of them will shoot at you while hovering in one spot but periodically change locations, either the SPEW or fully upgraded scatter blaster are good weapons for the first ones, though any level of ripper can disable all arms of the second Predator making both potentially deadly enemies into scrap in a short amount of time.
Sentry Turrets - There are two types of turrets, large and small. The small ones cannot be boarded and must be destroyed like any other enemy. The second turret however can be very useful because although it is a powerful enemy, it can be converted to your side with use of the control teather or recruiter grenade. Instead, you can simply get on the back of it, similar to how you would a vehicle, and either control it manually, or get off of it and let the AI control it as an ally. Both kinds use machine gun fire, but the large kind also uses mortars, similar to rockets, but with a slight eliptical curve.
Zombiebots - These are basically piles of scrap that from together into a single makeshift bot. They are fairly fast and deadly, attacking using their claw. They often fall apart and then come back to 'life' once before dying, but also do so when hit with exsplosives. Hard to kill without a lvl 3 spew or a lvl 2 scatter blaster, although a lvl 1 scatter blaster will in a pinch.
Beserkers - These Mils have chains on their neck, a spiked ball on their left arm, and they resemble a dog. Beserkers attack by swinging it's spiked ball at you while rushing at you. The only way to destroy them is to run backwards using a weapon that won't hurt you at close range.
Snipers - This mil will devestate you unless you look for cover behind a rock or building. They are armed with rivet guns, and they have almost perfect aim.
[edit] Weapons
The weapons in Metal Arms include a fairly standard set of gaming firearms, with the SPEW (Machine Gun), Scatter Blaster (Shotgun), Rivet Gun (Sniper) and Barrage Cannon (Rocket Launcher) covering the main weaponry. Also available are the Toaster (Flamethrower), the Mining Laser (A very underpowered laser gun), the Slingshot (For firing secondary weapons) and many more available to create carnage with. Secondary weapons include Coring Charges (Grenades), EMP Grenades (Grenades that temporarily shut down opposition in the area) and Recruiter Grenades (Used to recruit enemy bots into follwing you and attacking your enemies). All the primary weapons (excluding the spanner) can be upgraded in three stages - Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3. The Scope, a secondary weapon for attaching to primary weapons to improve accuracy can also be upgraded to Level 3 (The player receives it at Level 2). It can also be obtained at Level 1 in the sixth mission, "They Live." Here are the list of weapons:
Mining Laser - The most weakest gun in the game, they shoot lasers, it was normally just a laser that mines though rock. Level 1-green laser ,weak power. Level 2-yellow laser, able to charge and use a powerful blast of energy. Level 3-red laser, two barrels, stronger charge up.
Rocket Launcher - This gun is one of the best guns, and can blow up small groups of mils. Level 1-good power, handheld. Level 2-stronger, more powerful, shoulder placed. Level 3-Incredible power, shoots 4 rockets at a time.
Rivet Gun - a good gun that shoots arrows and have great accurecy. Level 1-shoots arrows with good accurecy. Level 2-arrows explode on impact. Level 3-stonger power, explosion larger, can charge arrow thingy.
Contol Tether - This gun can hack into enemies and use their powers againts their own teamates. Level 1-hacking speed is slow. Level 2-faster hacking speed. Level 3-faster hacking speed, improves enemy armour.
Scatter Blaster - The scatter blaster is a shotgun with deadly power. Level 1-regular shotgun power. Level 2-stronger, 2 barrels. Level 3-rapid fire, more power.
Ripper - this gun cuts though enemy limbs, and red steel cables. Level 1-regular cutting power. level 2-more power, drills though enemy chasis. Level 3-more power.
S.P.E.W. - (Small Projectile emitter Weapon) this gun was stolen from mils, and modified for droid use. Level 1-standard power. Level 2-more power. Level 3-mini gun velocity, more power.
Toaster - flamethower that melts though metal as if it were like plastic. Level 1-standard flamethowing power
(more guns needed)
[edit] Humor
A large portion of Metal Arms' humor comes from either its screaming Mil adversaries (when shot, the Mil Grunts often begin to scream and panic, running around shooting one another and shouting in high pitched voices) or its deliberately immature swearing (which is sometimes censored - something which only serves to heighten the comedy aspect). "Of course I fucking fixed him! He was a huge pain in the fucking waste pan, because he's some sort of custom jobbie!" is one such line, delivered by a four armed robot called Krunk, who swears profusely in almost every scene he is in. Despite this, there are some clever pieces of humour, such as discussions overheard between Mil bots, and the classic Mil commander who has a very strong German accent: "I haf ten vashers on zis goofy lookin' von here!" Also notable are some of the background announcements made in some of the Mil facilities, such as: "All systems alerted, code red. All systems alerted, code red. Have a nice day." and "Will the party or parties responsible for releasing all of the experimental looney bots please return them to their pens? They are shooting the employees. Thank you."
