Battle Engine Aquila

Watching an enormous enemy battle cruiser crash to the ground is nothing less than impressive. Especially if you've caused it.

Battle Engine Aquila is an interesting title, because it succeeds so spectacularly on so many counts, and yet fails on seemingly simple areas. The game is a successful hybrid of a traditional First Person Shooter and an airborne combat shooter, meshing the two gametypes together with a little flying, some ground work and a lot of shooting, all taking place on a series of islands where an intercontinental war is being acted out.

The developer is Lost Toys, who have released the game for the PS2 and the Xbox as their second game after the Playstation, Dreamcast and PC action game MoHo.

War, huh, what is good for…

An enemy base swarming with tanks to destroy. It may not be an objective, but it's still fun.

In the game, you take the role of Hawk Winter, the only man alive (thanks to a traitorous original driver) who can pilot the revolutionary new war machine, the Battle Engine Aquila. Naturally, you’re plucked not from the military, but from a probably illegal street race, and it is your duty as a good citizen to help your nation win the war against the aggressive and evil Muspell forces. You’ll defend spacecrafts, conveys, bases and other military forces while wiping out tanks, planes, individual soldiers and even mechs that would fill an arachnophobe’s nightmares for a year.

Of course the reason for the war isn’t important, nor is the justification for many of the mission objectives, but we’ll get on to that. After an exciting introductory montage, and a pretty well made opening full motion video sequence, I could hardly wait to get my building sized machine onto a battlefield and straight into someone’s face. A brief investigation of the menus was overridden by my natural instincts to get my finger on the trigger.

Welcome to the BEA Driving School

Your machine can destroy buildings and motherships, but is destroyed in water. When fighting over the sea, you'd better not run out of power.

The first mission is a well-produced tutorial that had me flying around the island within minutes, bombarding drones with my arsenal. Confident in my abilities, I followed each order to the letter, finally completing the mission successfully, only to find out that each one would be graded. For the tutorial, I was awarded a modest C grade, when I realised that going back over each mission to better your performance could provide a definite sense of achievement. During the tutorial you learn of the Battle Engine’s unique ability to transform from a land based super-tank to an airborne weapons cruiser. Obviously each variant has its advantage; The grounded Aquila has more shielding and stronger weapons while the flying variant is agile and has homing missiles.

More cinematics are shown in-between missions, to be rounded off with various ‘goodies’ awarded for various aspects of each mission. There are tens, perhaps hundreds to earn, for completing some of the 28 missions on various skill levels, destroying a certain number of targets, or taking on the ‘Evo’ missions. If you are skilled enough to complete a mission with a good enough grade, the ‘Evo’ alternative mission for the next mission may be unlocked, offering a more challenging variant of the next level. The enemies are slightly harder, there are more of them, and undoubtedly you’ll have more of a challenge, so you’re likely to have a long playtime.

Feeling the rhythm

Choose your weapons carefully for the mission ahead.

The machine really does handle well. Using a combination of the two analogue sticks and the shoulder buttons you’ll be able to gracefully manoeuvre while firing your various weapons madly into the air, or whatever else you choose to assault, and it’s really fun. Buildings are destroyed from the point that you shoot them; disable the supports and the whole thing will come crumbling down, of course you could just expend firepower on it from the top down if you appreciate a gradual explosion. The gratifying destruction of the enemy buildings pale in comparison with locking on to multiple enemies and unleashing a bombardment of missiles, and it doesn’t stop there. Your Vulcan cannon (basically machine guns) lock onto the path of moving targets, so zooming in on an escaping plane only to smash it out of the sky is a frequent occurrence.

There is a simplistic but effective multiplayer mode that’s got a lot of potential, and really can (depending on the options you set) open up a level of teamplay that’s satisfying in a game nowadays, but unfortunately, it’s the high level of teamplay in the main game that is the first stumbling block of the game.

Teamplay is not always a good thing

This is one of your bases, which amongst other things (your annoyingly weak army) you have to protect.

Have you ever played a game of doubles in tennis, badminton or some other two on two sport and felt that your team-mate is just letting you down? It’s the same kind of thing in Battle Engine Aquila. Much like you may wish your double left footed malcoordinated racket waving muppet of a friend wasn’t there, and that you’d do better without him, the ‘army’ sent to back you up is equally as useless.

That may be an exaggeration, as the army certainly do help you a lot, but in almost every level, you have to make a decisive effort to protect every last unit of the army on fear of failure. About three quarters of the way through the game you are faced with a mission that begins with a refreshingly open transmission, where your commander states that in this mission there are no rules or regulations; you merely have to wipe out the enemy forces over the island. This however means that you are left not knowing how much of your army can be destroyed before you are automatically failed. The indescribable frustration of battling carefully for 30 minutes only for some of your weak tanks to run into the heart of the enemy operation and be demolished, losing you the mission makes my teeth grind together. As far as I’m concerned, almost all missions would be easier if you weren’t accompanied by an army, and merely had to destroy everything by yourself.

That’s one big machine

An enemy machine bigger than you can certainly pack a punch, until it loses it's head.

The boss battles are fun though, primarily because you’re on your own trying to take out a massive awesomely structured machine. Generally the battles are quite simplistic, i.e. find the weak spot and exploit it, but the gameplay style really works well for those missions.

Everything is depicted very well, from the variation and detail of the islands to the intricate soldier with a colourful overall theme. Daytime and nighttime are both portrayed well, and effects such as laser beams and explosions look pretty stunning. Unfortunately, when in a large-scale battle with a lot going on around you, some pretty noticeable slowdowns occur. The music and sound are perfectly appropriate until you realise that the music doesn’t loop, so the point where the music ends and begins again is very noticeable, leaving a gap in the sound that almost implies a crash, but that said, the game is still a highly enjoyable, if slightly unfairly difficult blast. When it comes down to it, the vast difference in difficulty from the simplistic entry levels to the army protecting later Evo levels may just enhance the durability of the game.