On a peaceful March day in the year 2011, all Hell breaks loose around the globe. As unidentified pods crash land into the water around Los Angeles, its citizens begin to dawn upon the fact that their city, and their country, are under attack by an unknown enemy. This war between humanity and an unknown alien entity is the backdrop for all sorts of first-person shooting in Konami's XBOX Live Arcade/PSN release, Battle: Los Angeles. A companion to the recently-released blockbuster film of the same name, the game pits you into the role of one of the military heroes tasked with fighting back against the alien invaders, in an attempt to save the City of Angels from impending destruction.
The plot that is shared between the two entertainment mediums tries to provide a very personal story of courage, amongst the grand backdrop of a large scale battle. This is done by focusing solely on a small group of several marines and their personal experiences. The aforementioned group is made up of several marines, with a commander who was forced out of retirement by the attack. Players take control of a young rookie who fights alongside this heroic group, as they fight their way through the city to try to find the root of the attack. People who have watched the film will recognize the fellow marines in the unit, as they're taken straight from the film with recognizable likenesses.
After a brief tutorial, the game quickly gets into the action and never really lets up throughout the course of its brief campaign. Structured into three separate missions, the game's campaign only takes about an hour to complete on its hardest difficulty. However, despite its brevity, I had some fun with it. The game features a decent amount of variety, pitting players into the different roles of a traditional marine, protective sniper, airship destroyer and turret gunner. Each mission is broken up into different segments with differing types of gameplay, but each is full of near-constant action. You're almost always in the thick of it, which keeps you invested in the experience without many lulls.
Though the campaign is fun, it's far from perfect. In addition to being very brief (I beat it on all three difficulties within a 2 hour period,) the gameplay is very generic and basic, and the overall design is lacking. Playing through Battle: Los Angeles feels like you're playing through a B-movie, which has its pros and cons. I get the feeling that the developers (Live Action Studios) knew that when they developed the game, based on how it plays as well as the fact that they included leaderboards that compare your completion time and accuracy against others. It seems like it was developed as a short burst experience which would hopefully keep players coming back over and over again to try to best their top times. This is something that will most-likely turn a lot of gamers off, but others will enjoy this type of design.
In order to entice gamers to play through the game more than once, the developers included a ton of difficulty-specific unlockables. In order to unlock the achievement for unlocking everything, you must play through the game on each of its three difficulties. There are no hidden collectibles, so all of the unlockables based upon making it to the game's end credits. There are different types to unlock including making of videos, posters, and cheats. In addition, the game's achievement list has achievements for completing the game on each difficulty, which do not stack. This means that, if you beat it on hard, you will not get the achievements for beating the game on easy and normal as well.
Controlling your character will be second nature for anyone gamer who has played a first-person shooter in the past, as the game features a control scheme similar to that of Call of Duty. Three control schemes are available for customization, which was nice to see, because this was one of the first games where I actually wanted to alter the basic scheme. I just wish that the game featured fully customizable controls because, despite being able to find a scheme that suited me more than the default one, I would have appreciated the ability to change a couple of the button commands to create my ideal control scheme. That is a very small complaint though. Generally, though the controls felt a bit sluggish, they worked quite well. The sniper rifle had a decent amount of feedback recoil, though I didn't feel the same way about the machine gun, which didn't feel very immersive due to a lack of full recoil.
Presentation is a mixed bag when it comes to Battle: Los Angeles. Its visuals are quite colourful and feature some basic destruction with decent effects. However, they can be a bit blurry at times. There is some nice detail on the weapons, though there are only three weapons available to you (a sniper rifle, assault rifle and rocket launcher.) It looks okay for an Arcade game, apart from the enemy animations, which are very stiff and limited. Most of the time, the aliens will stand in a similar pose, with their gun outstretched, moving in a very stilted manner when they do alter their position. It was impressive to see that the developers went an extra step to include some alien blood into the visual design, because it adds to the game's immersion. The game also features support for 3D TVs but I was unable to test this feature.
The majority of the game's story is told through the use of animated comic panels, as opposed to computer generated cutscenes. These animated comics include a lot of detail and look pretty good, though they feature very limited amounts of animation. An introductory cutscene is shown as the game loads, featuring a narrator who is discussing how human beings felt invincible before the attack, as archival footage from wars in years past show on the screen. The narrator does a good job of setting up the game, though it's definitely the best voice acting in the game. Each character features his or her own dialogue, but most of the voice acting is mediocre at best, unfortunately. I do not believe they employed the use of the film's cast for the game's voice work, which is too bad.
In addition to the inclusion of some voice acting, the game also features several different sound effects and an original score. Most of the sound effects sound alright and do a decent job of representing what is happening in the game world, though there are some that don't sound as good as others. Most of the time, these sound effects (gunfire specifically) drown out any other sounds around you, which is to be expected, though this also means that it's hard to hear the game's rock-heavy score. What I heard of it (at a low volume during most of the game's combat-heavy sections) sounded decent but generic.
In conclusion, Battle: Los Angeles is an interesting experience and has become somewhat of an anomaly in my mind. Its design is very generic and it features one of the shortest campaigns I've ever played, but I still had some fun with it. Though its brief campaign and lack of any sort of multiplayer will turn some people off, those who enjoy to challenge their friends' completion times will perhaps enjoy the experience the most. I recommend giving the trial a chance first and proceeding if you really enjoy it. Overall, Battle: Los Angeles is a generic and brief experience that lacks a lot of content, but there's something compelling about it.
Rating: 4.5/10
Battle: Los Angeles is available now on the XBOX 360's Marketplace and PlayStation Network. It retails for 800 Microsoft Points or ten American dollars.
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