Mech Assault 2: Lone Wolf (Xbox)

(Herald rating: * * *)

Humans are so innately weak and powerless that video games requiring you to control heavy machinery really do make sense. Immersed in animated fantasy it's easy to forget that in the real world, one shard of shrapnel or the shockwave of an explosion can end it all.

Mech Assault 2 is such a game. It derives its roots from the heavyweight MechWarrior lineage of titles that started on the PC.

I still remember driving my robot over the crest of a sand dune in the original game to meet a wall of deadly mech warriors sitting like thick-legged spiders waiting to pounce.

The first Mech Assault console game was lauded for its multiplayer function, which emerged as a huge asset to the fledgling Xbox Live service, which lets you use your Xbox and a high-speed internet connection to battle other players around the world.

In Mech Assault 2 the story continues. You are the star, an unknown soldier stranded on planet Dante with a licence to drive sophisticated and heavily armed "mech" robots.

The story line is pretty tenuous but effectively plunges you into a battle for control of some "data cores" that, when combined, power a deadly super weapon.

Hordes of rival soldiers arrive in transporters to secure the cores, accompanied by tanks, helicopters and rival mech robots.

That would be a scary prospect if the game's artificial intelligence was a tad better.

The game play is not difficult once mastered and an unlimited supply of weapons allows you to shot away indiscriminately and eventually hit the right target.

The mech robots are more elaborate and gamers for the first time are able to climb out of their mechs and walk around as vulnerable humans.

A great new feature called "neural hacking" lets you latch on to another mech robot and by pressing a series of buttons in rapid succession, hijack it.

Trading up to a better mech therefore doesn't always mean progressing to the next level. If you're quick-witted you can steal someone else's without too much difficulty.

The scenery in Mech Assault 2 is surprisingly bland as though so much effort was put into perfecting the robots that the landscapes were thrown together as an after thought. But the freedom you have to destroy things partly makes up for this. In Mech Assault 2 just about anything you shoot can sustain damage.

The story is propelled by two annoying characters — Major Natalia Kerensky and Lieutenant Foster.

The voice-overs are filled with cliched techno-babble and amateur dramatics. "Our orbital scans are screaming red!" Shouts the excitable Lieutenant Foster at one point.

While the single-player missions will allow you to brush up on your Mech-driving skills, it really come to life in multi-player mode via split-screen, networking several Xboxes or going online at Xbox Live.. 

$100