 Come at me, bro! A terrorist force, disguising itself as the military of an enemy state, invades New York and proceeds to murder innocent civilians. One young test pilot has to take control of a giant prototype weapon of war and prevent the destruction of humanity.
1. Gameplay
 I always wonder why they have hands. Why not just attach the guns to the arms? The player in the game is the son of an engineer. You (the son) happen to be testing out a new prototype wanzer for a weapons manufacturer. Yes, somehow the developers of this game decided to call giant robotic weapons of war “wanzers”, which is probably the least intimidating / appropriate possible name for these mechanisms of death and destruction. I suppose that the developers took “walking” and “panzer” (German for “tank”) and decided to call these walking tanks “wanzers”, but even so it’s hard not to laugh hysterically when you hear the word. Seriously, try to scare someone by saying “there’s a wanzer coming at you”. Odds are you’ll just get arrested for sexual harassment. That aside, the first 3/4 of this game were somewhat compelling. During this segment, the main character is actually decently scripted. He’s clearly got emotions, but he’s never overemotional. Even when he thinks his dad is dead, he doesn’t cry over the whole thing. He just gets confused and angry but realizes that he’s got a job to do. Then he goes about and does it. It’s exactly the kind of reaction we would expect most young adult males to have at a difficult situation.  Confusion. Mostly confusion. Then for some reason the entire logic of the story falls completely apart. This made most evident when the player is taking an orbital elevator up to a gigantic space station. Don’t ask me how an orbital elevator can keep from collapsing on top of itself, even someone with just a rudimentary Lego set can tell you that super tall, thin structures will inevitably collapse with just a slight breeze. But that’s not the logical failure that I meant to focus on. The player, a general, and a random blonde foreigner are all going up the elevator together when enemy turrets turn to fire upon the trio. The general decides that this would be the perfect time to sacrifice himself. Keep in mind that the player has had to take down hundreds of much more difficult enemies by this point, so two turrets would be absolutely meaningless. But instead of helping the general, the other two (including the player’s character) stand by and watch as the general gets torn apart and eventually killed while taking down these turrets. The meaningless sacrifice is ended when the general says something to the effect of “make up for the sins of my soul” which I found to be completely indecipherable.  Dude, there's a fire. Right next to you. The rest of the storyline eventually devolves along this path. The story and characters up until this point had been flawed in some way. Aside from the main character, the rest of the cast was abysmally stereotypical, but in a way that didn’t fit any known group in real life. But it was, for the most part, forgivable because the gameplay was actually good. And that’s the even more aggravating thing. The game itself was smooth. The wanzers handled relatively well. The weapons were powerful enough to make a dent in enemies but not so powerful that I could mow through enemies in a few hits. There were a good number of customization options, all of which were easy to understand and apply. The game itself was a lot of fun to play.  Spiderbot, spiderbot, does whatever a spiderbot does. The only exception was the random points where the player was removed from the robots and forced to shoot enemies in a third-person shooter style of combat. The customization of the wanzers made it feel personal. That customization ended abruptly when the player left the cockpit and had to play on foot. Maybe if I had some ability to choose my weapons or customize my uniform’s color it would have been less jarring, but as it was included it seemed like a random afterthought. Overall I feel conflicted about this game. Just in terms of gameplay, I’d score this game relatively well. I never got stuck, the game was a challenge but not impossible, and the entire thing was an entertaining enough experience that I was left wanting more. Unfortunately, the storyline left much to be desired. Aside from the main character, the characters and dialog were abysmally written and only got worse in the last chapter. The motivations of the enemies were never truly made clear so I was left to try and fill in the gaps with more unanswerable questions. This game definitely merits a try, but try to pick it up on sale.
There is supposed to be multiplayer for this game, but either the servers have been shut down or no one is playing it online anymore. So players should not expect to get this game for the multiplayer.
 Generally those big red symbols mean bad things are about to happen. There were one of two places where I was caught off guard because of some requirement I was never informed of. For example, in one mission I am forced to use a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to destroy a building. However, before receiving these instructions I had been using the rockets to shoot enemies. With no ammunition around, I ended up failing the mission and having to restart from a checkpoint. It felt unfair, but because the checkpoint was not too far behind where I had gotten I wasn’t too angry. I also had some trouble sometimes with strafing. I wanted to strafe while using the “hover” mode since I would go faster, but for some reason the game would only really allow me to travel forward or backward in hover mode. This meant that I either had to slowly strafe while walking or make sort of “bombing runs” by attacking an enemy while boosting toward or away from them before quickly turning away and boosting in another direction to avoid their fire. The whole process felt fairly inefficient. 2. Parental Notices
 The only possible exception is the “on foot” sections. In these, the player will use submachine guns and shotguns to kill a good number of enemy soldiers. As before, there is no blood and never any gore.  In fact, the only time blood is ever shown in the game is during the cutscenes. In one, the player’s father gets sniped in the heart. This covers the father in blood. However, the amount of time this blood is on the screen is fairly short.  How did his badge get bloody but not his coat underneath?
 Anyone else notice that her breasts are larger than her ribcage? Outside of the wanzers, the female characters had a habit of walking in an overly sexual manner. That may sound a bit odd, but basically there was a lot of hip swaying. Camera angles also tended to focus on the female’s lower-halves rather than their faces even if they were talking. At the end of the game, the main character somehow develops a romance with one of the female protagonists. The romance isn’t really surprising but it makes about as much sense as the rest of the storyline (which, in case you didn’t pick up on my earlier thoughts, made very little sense).  Kisses!
3. Other Factors
 The lack of any religious symbols or uniform makes the mention of souls and Valkyrie even more surprising. References to sins and souls are fairly common, especially on part of the antagonists. Evidently the motivation for the antagonists to wipe out all life on Earth has to do with the fact that people’s souls are blackened by their sins. Since humanity is corrupt, everyone has to die.
Other than this, extreme sports are not a factor.
 Like mercury, but solid. However, somehow the antagonists are able to take control of any wanzer that is actively using an E.D.G.E. system. This control extends not just to the wanzer itself but anyone piloting the wanzer. Somehow, the control manages to become a mind control device which forces the controlled wanzer pilot to do exactly what the controller says. Again, the game never explains exactly how this system works. As a result, I have to consider it magic.
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