by Matt Bird

Created on: July 03, 2008   Last Updated: July 08, 2008

It's hard to mess up a space shooter. Who doesn't want to zip around the galaxy in a spaceship blasting aliens, or robots, or whatever, into oblivion? At the very least such a game should provide some temporary entertainment.

So I thought going into Tommy Twisters' Martians vs. Robots. You can't get more obvious about the goal of the game with a title like that. The story is throwaway: you (the Martians) must destroy the evil Robots, who have killed their former human creators. You do this in your spaceship. You fly around a contained arena and blow up the forces of the Robots.

Unfortunately, especially early on, there's little interaction with the Robots. The first three levels are limited to blowing up one or two enemies and then spending the rest of the time flying around shooting at asteroids. You get minerals to help upgrade your ship's capabilities by destroying these asteroids, which is nice. But therein lays the big problem with this game: the first few levels are boring.

The initial enemies you encounter aren't really ships. They're just asteroids with magnets attached that draw the rock in your direction. This could prove difficult except that they don't do much damage when they strike your ship, nor are they all that swift. Once they're gone you just meander around until the level's timer runs down. These asteroids are eventually replaced by actual ships and space stations that shoot back, but it seems to take too long to get to these enemies. I can't imagine many players will tough it out past the first few dull levels.

Martians vs. Robots controls nicely. Navigating your ship around asteroids isn't difficult: you hit a button to thrust your ship forward and then use the mouse to steer. Another hit of a button will stop the ship dead in its tracks. Shooting requires a click of your mouse. It's easy to master, and fun to play around with-but only for a while. The playing area is limited to enemies and asteroids, and with decent but not terribly interesting graphics and blandly repetitive music, Martians vs. Robots can't hold up as a flying game alone.

The game shows promise. It has a multiplayer mode that allows you to connect to remote servers or start your own games, with rooms big enough for 24 players. But how good is multiplayer bound to be without any other players? I went into several rooms and found zero players. Lacking opponents you're restricted to attacking strange obelisk enemies that fire laser beams at you. Very tiresome. And you can make your own maps to fight on, but again, if you don't have other players how fun are these maps going to be?

Martians vs. Robots could have been a good game. But Tommy Twister's programmers made a big mistake in waiting several levels before introducing enemies. The one-two punch of dull play and bland visuals are likely to put Martians vs. Robots out for the count quickly. I can't recommend buying it, nor would I buy it myself. 2/5

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