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> Results: Future Tactics: The Uprising
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Creatures have taken over the world.And thus begins Future Tactics: The Uprising, a melting pot of tactics strategy and action shooter elements, combined haphazardly into an often repetitive gaming experience. The game is divided into three modes of play ﾖ Boot Camp, Story Mode, and Battle Mode. Boot Camp is a tutorial arena, allowing you to practice different movement and attack commands. Story Mode, the core of Future Tactics, is a 19 episode storyline based on the battles of team of characters as they pursue their goal of removing the Creature threat from the planet. Battle Mode, which is essentially the games Versus mode, allows multiple players, or a single player vs. the computer, to battle it out in various areas, either as human or creature.  Youﾒll find Story Mode to be the most interesting aspect of Future Tactics, as not only does it provide a storyline to follow and a defined goal to accomplish, but by doing so, youﾒll unlock numerous features in Battle Mode. Each story episode is played out in a different environmental battle area such as a small village, an ancient highway littered with vehicles, coastal cliffs, or alien Creature habitats. You begin Story Mode as the father-son duo of Father and Low, battling a group of aliens collectively known as, simply, the Creatures. As the storyline progresses, new characters will be introduced and other characters will leave, but typically, your combat team will consist of two to four individuals at any given time, having the task of reaching a particular point in the battle area, eliminating all the creatures, protecting a certain character or structure, or performing some other specific task. Doing so allows you to proceed to the next episode. Future Tactics attempts to make a unique stand from other tactics games with its combat system. Based on the established design of turn-based combat, each character is given a range of commands to choose from which usually consist of moving your player into position, attacking, moving to another position, and then resting until the next turn. The available commands provided during each turn are minimal ﾖ Move, Attack, and Rest. (Itﾒs also possible to survey the arena at nearly any point during a turn, with either a 1st person view or free-roaming area camera.) With Move, you receive full control over your character via an analog stick, in much the same manner as your typical 3D action game ﾖ there are no standard tactics movement grids to be found here. Your movement range is limited to a defined radius (visually appearing on screen as a circle of glowing green globes), where youﾒre free to travel the landscape, jumping and running about. Stopping for a moment will reveal a second ring of glowing globes (this time blue), which indicates the movement radius youﾒll have once youﾒve ended your current primary movement. (This is an obviously handy feature, as youﾒll play the ﾓmove to a new position, fire, duck behind a boulderﾔ game quite often.) The farther you travel in your green primary movement, the less blue secondary movement youﾒll have available later. Once youﾒve positioned your character, youﾒre free to Attack. Attacks are made with either a line of sight weapon (typically a laser rifle of some kind), ballistic mortar weapon, or via hand to hand combat. A line of sight attack involves managing a moving target sight about the screen (each character has the jitters, apparently), until youﾒve locked your crosshair on your intended target. Once locked, youﾒll need to match two additional markers to determine the overall strength of your attack. With the markers set, your character will fire. Thankfully, should you have a particular upgrade, youﾒll be able to amplify the strength of your attack via some well timed button taps during the firing animation, be able to fire twice per turn, zoom in sniper style, etc. Ballistic weapons are similar to the ﾓtap at just the right momentﾔ line of sight attacks. Here, an overhead view of the arena is presented, with a water-ripple radar effect representing your ballistic targeting. Matching a ripple radius, and then a standard radar scan, to the general location of the enemy will result in a satisfying explosion atop the enemyﾒs head, or near enough to produce some secondary damage. Like Line Of Sight weapons, different upgrades, like increased range, are available to help augment your mortar fire. Hand to hand combat is handled entirely by the game itself ﾖ thereﾒs little to be done other than walking within melee range of an enemy, then selecting the hand combat Attack icon. Oddly, hand combat is often much more powerful than weaponry against some of the more significant heavies youﾒll be doing battle with. Once youﾒve made your movements and attacks, your character is provided the opportunity to rest until his/her/its next turn in either one of three ways ﾖ Rest, Heal, or Shield. Rest simply leaves your character stationary until the next turn, Heal will fill a bit of your health bar (though making you more vulnerable if attacked), and Shield will provide you more protection from an attack, but at a cost of 30% of your next movement and a necessary recharge of two turns. Following the Playerﾒs turn, the Creatures will have a turn of their own, taking shots at your characters, moving into new positions, and otherwise attempting to cause much heartache for the player. These enemies vary in size and shape, though are clearly based on the same evolutionary or genetic chain. While some creatures are quick and agile (and sometimes suicidal), others are lumbering but powerful weapons of mass destruction. It should be noted that, befitting the comical and stupidity-ridden look of the Creatures themselves, enemy AI is often incredibly inept. Itﾒs only their tough alien hides which provide a level of challenge ﾖ their intelligence (which reflects the AI programming) is often severely lacking. A highlight of Future Tactics is the major area deformations resulting from combat, with giant craters, boulders blasted into oblivion, and buildings reduced to smoldering piles of rubble. Laying down swaths of destruction is fun in its own right, but also conducive to the game play ﾖ creating your own shelters and hideaways is clearly one of the more interesting strategies featured in Future Tactics, and youﾒll find the completion of some episodes will greatly depend on your destructive mindset. The randomness of destructive ﾓshrapnelﾔ (boulders, mine carts and such) is a nice touch, but sometimes a bit too random as to make shrapnel part of your overall strategy. Weapon Upgrades and Health Packs sparsely litter each battle area, either sitting clearly in the open, hidden within a structure or buried in the landscape. Weapon Upgrades are incredibly handy, and your progression in Story Mode will be made that much easier with each upgrade you acquire. Unfortunately, finding hidden upgrades can sometimes be an exercise in frustration, as no hints are provided as to how many items are available within a particular episode, and itﾒs sometimes difficult, much less tedious, to search an area while avoiding Creatures. The fact that episodes cannot be replayed will hamper your search efforts even further. Thankfully, experience earned by your combat team (the more experience, the more damage potential) and found upgrades are always retained should you lose an episode and have to restart. Aesthetically, Future Tactics doesnﾒt surprise nor impress, but suffices in providing an adequate backdrop. The graphics consist of average looking textures and low-poly landscape models, while the game characters themselves are presented in a cartoon like manner, with brash designs, bold color schemes and rigid animation. The Creature roster is visually more impressive, with fluid, comical mannerisms, and a nice but limited selection of personality sound-bytes. The storyline, awkward and disjointed as it is, is revealed thru a combination of in-game cut scenes and scrolling text diaries. The voiceover work, featuring heavy British accents for most characters, is well done though dis-serviced with a decidedly poor script treatment. The gameﾒs selection of music tracks are impressive for a budget title, and certainly provide a variety of music styles ﾖ the only disappoint being there isnﾒt more of them. The game provides an Options menu allowing you to make a fair number of changes, including music and sound effect volume levels, disabling the in-game music, enabling cut scene subtitles, etc. Youﾒll find these options handy, as they help make up for the gameﾒs poor default settings. Future Tactics: The Uprising is an example of video game innovation in action, and thereﾒs something to be said for attempting something new. But with a bold attempt to cater to both gaming genres, thereﾒs very little variety in both the tactics and action styles of play. Combined with a sore lack of different enemies, non-intuitive menus and a weak upgrade system, the actual gaming youﾒll find in Future Tactics proves repetitive and tired in short order. The Battle Mode, which you might expect to bring a fair level of replayability to the game, is instead crippled by its Unlock ties to the Story Mode and a total lack of weapon upgrading. The budget price of $20 may make Future Tactics: The Uprising well suited for tactical combat newbies looking to explore a different style of gaming, but for more experienced tactics or action gamers, this one is better left as a weekend rental. Kid Factor: Rated T for Teen, Future Tactics: The Uprising lacks any outright realistic violence or gore, instead preferring to go with a cleaner, cartoon-like approach of comical characters and fantasy weaponry. The game is rather suggestive with certain themes, such as a pregnancy as a Story Mode plot point, and features some mild language as well. Recommended for the ratingﾒs suggested age group. Reviewer Recommended Ages: 13+ Genre: 3-D Tactical Combat ESRB Rating: T for Teen Producer: Crave Entertainment Developer: Zed Two Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Future Tactics: The Uprising |
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