Grade: B+
Developer: Kuju
Publisher: Nintendo
Year:2006
At first glance to the untrained eye,this looks like a cute little cartoon show with their cute widdle guns and .... aw look at those missiles. From first glance to a trained eye,this is practically Advance Wars gone 3D and with control of a whole army in an RTS way,or in other words little tykes killing more little tykes with cute little accents with each faction as a charicature. It starts off kind of slow in a linear,tutorial way,but quickly progresses into the point where you're driving tanks,shooting down missiles and then.........you are the Gunship that needs worry about being shot down. You play as Western Frontier following orders from 3 CO's [One with a serious gruff tone who appropriately enough looks like Colin Powell,one with this happy-go-lucky tone or as VGC would say "stacked",and one with a stereotypical cowboy accent] against various enemies [including one army that looks much like and sounds like Soviet Russia].The controls are inconsistent at the beginning but become mostly fluid once you are on your own [save the Global Mode which is useless,the Recon vehicles and Bombers which are a train wreck to control].Graphically while the characters themselves are cute,they have nothing on the backgrounds which are complete eye candy.
Also it has this cool ranking system where if you get the highest score at the end of each campaign,you get a Bonus Mission where you play as a totally different army! Now that's replay value. For you ADD players,there are more than enough explosions to go around,with barrels everywhere that of course explode. The coolest part however is switching units,maybe I'm off the wall but I just love how the camera zooms out and in so dramatically
But it does have flaws,like awkward camera angles,unintelligent AI,ridiculous cut-scenes and voice acting,and no multiplayer,and it's down right irritating trying to lock on to enemy only for one of your soldiers to get in the way and get locked on. While some complain it's too short it actually took me months to really get into the heart of this baby,and it should not be written off,this game has more to it than meets the eye