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Review: Tech Romancer |
I really can’t remember the last time I fell in love with a game at first sight. I laughed at SF2 when it first came out, and even when I was a devoted Capcom fan, I ruthlessly derided SNK and their Fatal Fury and King Of Fighters games….for a while. So you see it’s rare for me to come across a new fighter and just go “YES!” straight away. Rare, but not impossible, as Capcom’s 3D Mech fighting game Tech Romancer proves perfectly.
Although nothing is explicitly stated — Tech Romancer is basically the sequel to that hard-to-find 2D classic CyberBots. You’ve got the same “people pilot giant robots while enduring long melodramatic plotlines involving evil mechs and aliens” thing going on, you’ve got the “stomping around trashing cities” thing, hell you’ve even got Jin Saotome and Blodia…I guess sequeling a game no-one ever heard of means you have to rebrand. What exactly does Tech Romancer mean anyway?
Now I’ll admit, the very first time I played it, I was totally confused. The controls were different, the display was different….I had no idea what was going on. But quickly things started to fall into place, and I found the more I understood, the greater my joy became.
The single player can play through either a simple run of opponents to get a high score, or undertake the more elaborate “Story Mode” - where cutscenes full of badly-translated, space opera dialogue occur between each fight, and events are broken up into chapters.
In these fights, you, the pilot of your chosen Mech, are expected to absolutely beat the hell out of all opponents, be they aliens, kids, military types and ultimately evil overlords with stupid names. Your tools? Big robots. Guns. Bombs. Lasers. Sharp things. And not only are you smashing each other to bits, but the fights take place in cities, or near power plants or military bases … so there’s plenty of buildings to stomp on as well. I think one of the things that makes me enjoy Tech Romancer so much is the awesome level of carnage that takes place. The huge explosions, the streams of gorgeous neon energy, the collapsing buildings….even basic punches and kicks are exaggerated and hit with appropriate force. It’s very…kinetic. Nothing beats the feeling of dashing full speed at your opponent, knocking tower blocks over as you go, then sending them flying and seeing their crash-landing create a massive crater or gouge in the ground.
If you were a fan of the 80’s cartoon “Transformers” — there are a couple of things that will bring a smile to your face. Two of the mechs (Rafaga and Twinzen V) have “transforming” abilities: Rafaga can switch between normal stance, a helicopter-type aircraft and a small tank, and Twinzen is two aircraft that combine to form one mech. The transformation sequences have the exact same “twist, pull and reform” look that the TF cartoon ones had. Hell, one of the characters even says something like “she’s a robot in disguise!”
The combat system is simple to utilise. Two attack buttons, a jump and a guard. You can sidestep and freewalk just like Soul Calibur. Specials and supers are activated by simple “Back, Forward + (A)” motions. Then there are items to pick up, gained, King of the Monsters-style from collapsed structures: various huge cannons and bombs, life, power, speed and defence-ups, and even giant melee weapons like swords and staffs. Many of the “normal” attacks are in the form of laser fire, or missiles or whatever, and the screen is constantly illuminated by a wealth of gorgeous plasma effects and explosions.
It uses the old Killer Instinct system of having two lifebars. Lose one and the round is over, and you move onto the second one, while the other player retains his status. There’s also an “armour” gauge, which decreases, as you guard, until it hits zero and from then on you take more damage from each hit.
If any of this talk of giant robots and armour is giving you flashbacks to the awful Zero Divide games on the Playstation — you can relax, it’s everything ZD should have been, fast, fun, and full of destruction and cybernetic carnage.
For a 3D fighter, it’s incredibly swift and responsive allowing frenetic attack sequences, skilful avoidance and accurate defending.
As well as supers, there are “Final Attacks” — which can be activated once you are half-way through your opponent’s second life bar. If the attack connects — that’s it, you kill the other guy in a suitably explosive way. The downside is these attacks have a big startup pause, are blockable and leave you completely open if you miss. It’s a desperate, last-ditch shot at victory. I like it.
If you didn’t know, Tech Romancer is an arcade conversion, from a 1998 arcade game, of the same name. Now I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know if the visuals have been improved over it’s coin-op parent, if they have, it’s not a great improvement. The 3D isn’t marvellous. It’s adequate. The models are neat and clear, and don’t glitch or break up or anything. But the poly count is low, and the textures look a bit….Playstation-y. Much the same can be said of the backgrounds. The structures look simple and flat-shaded and several of the stages are just flat empty areas with poor floor textures. Two of the stages feature enormously intrusive “lens flare” effects, the same two stages that are far too underlit everywhere else, making things just a bit confusing.
As I mentioned before, the special effects look tremendous, luscious fruit-flavoured beams of light spewing forth all over the place…yum.
Despite TR being a 3D game, Capcom have still managed to excel themselves in the 2D art department. The intro is sheer 80’s giant robot anime class, every character has character portraits, their own set of “Episode #” titles between fights, pictures of their mechs, plus the VS. screen art and cutscene pictures. There’s tonnes of it! And it’s all hi-res, bright, clear and beautifully-drawn. If that’s not enough, you can also unlock a secret art gallery with fan and official art.
Ah, the magic word for fighting games in the year 2000 - “unlock”. Yes Virginia, lifespan extending extras are what I’m talking about, and there are plenty of them. A visit to the “Tatsumi Techno Dome” via the main menu grants you access to a virtual laboratory, where funds you earn through downloadable VMU minigames can be used to purchase new characters, other VMU games, art galleries, mech data files, puzzles and even a Karaoke mode!
It’s also worth mentioning every “story” mode for each character has more than one path to take, thus more than one outcome. Neat!
The characters are hardly original. The square-jawed hero, the annoying kids, the mysterious woman with a mech that wears a bra (game designers: please stop doing that!), the cocky loner…blah blah blah. The numerous cutscenes do help to flesh them out a little, adding to the games’ appeal, and it’s interesting to play one character and see their story, then as a related one to see another side to the events. Apparently many of the mechs are “homages” (rip-offs) of various anime sources. I have no idea.
As much as I enjoy it, it does have faults - it has to be said that the large amount of easy projectiles, plus the simplicity of the special and super moves means it’s possible to just sit there pumping out laser fire in order to win. You don’t have to do this, but it’s an option, a last resort even. It’s made worse with the fact that the “overheat” function of CyberBots has gone: your multiple projectiles are neverending. Fortunately normal blasts don’t do block damage.
The on-screen display is a bit over the top. You’ve got your mech’s name, the timer, the life bars, super meter, armour gauge, item list, item name, item meter (if activated), the “FINAL ATTACK” indicator, the round win symbols…oh, and “Press Start” at the bottom. I know there are a lot of important gameplay features that need to be represented, but they’re rendered in so many colours — it looks a little ugly - and is hard to grasp when you begin playing.
The biggest crime here is in the audio department. The music is terrible. There, I said it. All of you moaning about the sonic accompaniment to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 really need to listen to some of the “tunes” on offer here. Whether you agreed with the mood and direction of the MvC2 music, it was still professionally and competently produced: not so here, the title screen music is a tiny loop of irritating noise, the stage themes are uninteresting and totally non catchy, with a few typical “action” or “dashing” sounding tracks for the cut-scenes. Absolutely none of them add anything to the game at all and the innovation and creativity used hovers dangerously close to “zero” — it really is very bad. It’s made worse as the credits reveal the musician for TR was none other than Yuki Iwai - and she was responsible for some of my favourite tracks in SFA3.
There’s no training mode either. OK it’s not the worlds’ most combo heavy game, nor does each character possess more than about 8 or so moves…but still….it would have been nice to be able to time stun lengths and work out juggle opportunities in a non-combat environment.
But overall, it also has that special something I feel is very important in a fighter: the feeling of measuring what your opponent does and reacting accordingly. To me it’s an important thing — and is one of the reasons I’ve never really got into the Tekkens and VFs — to me battles in those games feel like just two people standing there doing random moves over and over until one of the players is KO’d. I like fighting games where your opponents actions and errors play a major part in your own strategy; like jumping over a fireball and attacking in SF for example.
Now I know that this concept *is* in Tekken and Virtua Fighter games, to deny this would be foolish in the extreme, but it just doesn’t seem prominent at a lower/beginner level of play. Not so in Tech Romancer — within half an hour or so I was starting to learn attack ranges and recovery times, and using this knowledge to my advantage. Which brings me onto the learning curve, another important aspect of a fighter. And unsurprisingly, TR’s is excellent. As I mentioned earlier, it is very confusing at first, particularly if you’ve never seen the game before — but once you get to grips with the display, then the controls, things start to fall into place. As time goes on, you piece together attack sequences and strategies, learn what counters what and the more you know, the better the game becomes.
I find truly great fighting games create “moments” while playing them, things that can be later retold as idiotic anecdotes of interest to no-one whatsoever. Tech Romancer is full of these “kewl” moments — my personal favourite so far being playing as Rafaga, seeing my opponent activate “HERO MODE” and taking to the skies, at which point I activate my mech’s “flying” mode, transform and proceeding to strafe the bastard from the air….brilliance!
I don’t think there’s person alive who doesn’t like to see massive robots smashing each other to bits, so the audience for this is huge….it takes things a little further than most fighters, and the buzz from the speed, action and destruction is hard to beat. Own it.
