S.L.A.I.
In a dystopian future, we'll all be driving scoobies.
Published: September 20, 2005
If you owned an Xbox near the system's launch, you were treated to a curious number of mech fighting games all arriving roughly around the same time. If you were a fan of the genre, this is a very good thing indeed, since at least two of them, Phantagram's Phantom Crash and Microsoft's own, Mech Assault were really quite entertaining -- albeit for different types of gamers.
Even with a storyline involving a post-apocalyptic set of kids making the most of their bleak world by building robots and shooting the crap out of each other, the game still didn't make as huge a dent as its Microsoft-backed big-budget cousin. It was popular, sure, but it lacked something that MechAssault didn't: online play.
Now, three years later, Genki has moved things to the PS2, and, oddly enough, finally taken the game online (one would argue that the platform hop should have gone the other way around, given the relative lack of online organization the PS2 offers). They dropped Phantagram as a publisher, sidled up to Konami and the result is Steel Lancer Arena International, but we like to just stick with S.L.A.I..
If you played Phantom Crash, its sequel plays nearly identically. If you haven't, we'll go into a little more detail. After the relative success and evident danger of piloting couple-ton robots normally used for military operations, the world started to notice that Japan's affinity for mech combat was actually rather cool.
An organization called FIRA helped lay down some basic ground rules, had the pilots jack into the mechs remotely with the help of a special chip that levels up with battle experience and improves aiming and targeting, and a full worldwide sport was born. Rumbling, they called it, and it allowed for a whole host of additions to the formula that the original Neo-Tokyo punk kids introduced years back. A wider variety of mech manufacturers meant more choices between speed and toughness, and the development of more intelligent chips to help drive the mechs, called scoot vehicles or SVs, meant a bigger market for parts.
In fact, the parts stores are largely carried over from Phantom Crash, though they're renamed and expanded upon a bit, but you still have total control over picking a body (where the cockpit and main functions are stored), arms, legs and shoulder-mounted weapons. There's an option to shell out more money to trade weight for speed or sacrifice agility to get more power and defense, and this is where the Gran Turismo-style tweaking comes into play.
At first it's quite a bit to take in, but Genki wisely kept things rather simplistic, nesting the different functions under different vendors that are shared across all servers in the game world. The upgrades available are limited to each type of SV manufacturer, and from there only a few weapons are actually available, which allows easy customization of close-, medium- and long-range fighting.
Throw on a pile driver for a quick, high-damage lunging attack, a machine gun for spraying some ammo and de-cloaking ships running under optic camouflage, and perhaps a few rocket launchers to unload a quick long-rang barrage, and you've got a well-rounded machine. Of course, then you'll have to continually tweak things for maximum impact, upping the weight (and subsequent ammo, power and armor) of some weapons at a cost of weight, or dropping it to smooth out maneuverability. Each SV has a weight limit, and exceeding that will cause a massive drop in output.
S.L.A.I. is a slow build. The first couple of matches have to be chosen wisely according to a calendar that regulates certain class entries. Try to hop into a B-class match with your starting mech, and you'll last about 10 seconds. Instead, you'll have to enter D-class fights, charge in, offa few enemies and then retreat before you're taken out. It's a fantastic risk vs. reward dance, and if you're feeling especially lucky, you can stay in long enough to challenge the class leader. Beat him and you capture a class for that sector -- but there are day and night battles to be won.
The only time this whole balance of staying in to win money for upgrades and repairs vs. getting out before you blow up and lose it all falls apart is when higher-powered SVs enter the match. These "Crashers" are usually much, much more powerful than anyone else on the field, and it's hard to pick them out in a heated match (they have a different colored life bar, but it's not as obvious as, say, the red-tinted boss bars). This can lead to a lot of destroyed mechs and reloaded games early on.
Even with a storyline involving a post-apocalyptic set of kids making the most of their bleak world by building robots and shooting the crap out of each other, the game still didn't make as huge a dent as its Microsoft-backed big-budget cousin. It was popular, sure, but it lacked something that MechAssault didn't: online play.
Now, three years later, Genki has moved things to the PS2, and, oddly enough, finally taken the game online (one would argue that the platform hop should have gone the other way around, given the relative lack of online organization the PS2 offers). They dropped Phantagram as a publisher, sidled up to Konami and the result is Steel Lancer Arena International, but we like to just stick with S.L.A.I..
If you played Phantom Crash, its sequel plays nearly identically. If you haven't, we'll go into a little more detail. After the relative success and evident danger of piloting couple-ton robots normally used for military operations, the world started to notice that Japan's affinity for mech combat was actually rather cool.
An organization called FIRA helped lay down some basic ground rules, had the pilots jack into the mechs remotely with the help of a special chip that levels up with battle experience and improves aiming and targeting, and a full worldwide sport was born. Rumbling, they called it, and it allowed for a whole host of additions to the formula that the original Neo-Tokyo punk kids introduced years back. A wider variety of mech manufacturers meant more choices between speed and toughness, and the development of more intelligent chips to help drive the mechs, called scoot vehicles or SVs, meant a bigger market for parts.
In fact, the parts stores are largely carried over from Phantom Crash, though they're renamed and expanded upon a bit, but you still have total control over picking a body (where the cockpit and main functions are stored), arms, legs and shoulder-mounted weapons. There's an option to shell out more money to trade weight for speed or sacrifice agility to get more power and defense, and this is where the Gran Turismo-style tweaking comes into play.
At first it's quite a bit to take in, but Genki wisely kept things rather simplistic, nesting the different functions under different vendors that are shared across all servers in the game world. The upgrades available are limited to each type of SV manufacturer, and from there only a few weapons are actually available, which allows easy customization of close-, medium- and long-range fighting.
Throw on a pile driver for a quick, high-damage lunging attack, a machine gun for spraying some ammo and de-cloaking ships running under optic camouflage, and perhaps a few rocket launchers to unload a quick long-rang barrage, and you've got a well-rounded machine. Of course, then you'll have to continually tweak things for maximum impact, upping the weight (and subsequent ammo, power and armor) of some weapons at a cost of weight, or dropping it to smooth out maneuverability. Each SV has a weight limit, and exceeding that will cause a massive drop in output.
S.L.A.I. is a slow build. The first couple of matches have to be chosen wisely according to a calendar that regulates certain class entries. Try to hop into a B-class match with your starting mech, and you'll last about 10 seconds. Instead, you'll have to enter D-class fights, charge in, offa few enemies and then retreat before you're taken out. It's a fantastic risk vs. reward dance, and if you're feeling especially lucky, you can stay in long enough to challenge the class leader. Beat him and you capture a class for that sector -- but there are day and night battles to be won.
The only time this whole balance of staying in to win money for upgrades and repairs vs. getting out before you blow up and lose it all falls apart is when higher-powered SVs enter the match. These "Crashers" are usually much, much more powerful than anyone else on the field, and it's hard to pick them out in a heated match (they have a different colored life bar, but it's not as obvious as, say, the red-tinted boss bars). This can lead to a lot of destroyed mechs and reloaded games early on.
