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> Results: MechAssault: Phantom War
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What GamerDad says about the ESRB Content Descriptors:
Fantasy Violence: GamerDad watched our bots blast their bots and their bots blasting our bots ... and occasionally the little guards who got in the way. Mild Language: GamerDad heard a few mild exclamatory remarks with mild language, but nothing that isn't said frequently on ﾑprime time' television. Ever since the Mechwarrior series of games was abandoned, fans have been looking for a fix. The closest thing came packed as a XBOX game that showed off the joys of multiplayer for that system ﾖ and that is the basis of the DS game. And that is also the basis of its problems: console ports look uglier and perform worse on the DS than on the PSP, the control schemes require considerable effort to translate in a workable form, and Nintendo's WiFi network is different than other console networks. None of those are insurmountable, as others have demonstrated, but all require effort. But none of them got the required attention, making the game terrible to look at and terrible to play. The game descends from promising to ﾑtrain wreck' very quickly ﾖ you are dropped into a nice looking tutorial section which then places you into a series of combat situations. Each of these is supposed to illustrate a certain section of he gameplay ﾖ but instead they show you the unstable framerate, the grainy graphics that make finding enemies difficult, and the lousy controls. Once you get used to these issues you realize that the single player game is unsatisfying, but get hopeful once again since the multiplayer was the main attraction on the XBOX game. Then you realize that only local multiplayer requiring multiple cartridges is supported, and you get disappointed again. Overall, this game is too short and too flawed and lacking any single or multiplayer element to make it stand out as anything but something to avoid.  
In my opinion, MechAssault: Phantom War should have been rated E-10. The violence is abstracted to bots, and it is never bloody or gory. The language is easily characterized as ﾑmild' as you will hear words like ﾑhell' and ﾑdamn' used in exclamations, but little else. The worst thing I saw was trampling guards with my bot, but it is done in a way that doesn't look or feel cruel or realistic. So despite the ESRB T rating, I believe that kids over 10 can handle this game ... of course, you shouldn't buy it and they won't want to play it for long ﾖ but if they do, the content is acceptable.
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