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any games are developed and released overseas that never see the light of day in North America, but now and again something curious slips through. Russian developer Akella's Metal Heart: Replicant's Rampage is a stand-and-deliver cyberpunk role-playing game modeled closely after Tim Cain's post-apocalyptic and hugely lauded Fallout series. Wisecracking space pilots Sheris Sheridan and Lanthan Signi are caught in a magnetic storm (or is it a wormhole?) and forced to crash-land on an uncharted planet called Procyon. Procyon is under the dominion of a tyrannical government strip-mining the planet for its exceptionally rare deposits of tactonium—a mineral used in cybernetic implant grafts—leading Sheris and Lanthan on a planet-sprawling quest to (however dubiously) unite four races, depose an empire, win their freedom and return home.
Using an isometric perspective, players mouse-click Sheris and Lanthan (and eventually several others—up to six at a time) through an elaborate 2D-rendered world full of hostile creatures and arcane cybernetic technology. Each character has nearly a dozen attributes, while the more common secondary skill system has been supplanted by an implant interface. Implants (more than 600 in all) are acquired throughout the game, either found or through surgery, and can be manipulated in a "paper doll" inventory that binds certain devices to various organs or limbs, improving attributes and increasingly "mechanizing" characters. Like donor organs, implants in Metal Heart have a "rejection" factor, requiring tactonium serum to encourage body integration—if an implant runs out of this serum, it begins draining the character's health. Attribute points are awarded and can be distributed upon gaining a level, which in turn requires gaining experience by defeating enemies and completing quests.
Health, stamina and tactonium levels are displayed on the main screen alongside each character's two active weapon/item slots. Characters can stand, crouch or crawl (this affects visibility to other creatures) and can walk or run relative to stamina and attribute levels. Combat is lifted directly from the Fallout series and follows a turn-based point-driven system: When an enemy comes within range, the game auto-switches from real-time to turn-based mode, during which character actions (moving, firing a weapon, reloading, etc.) are driven by attribute-dependent action points. Left-clicking an opponent triggers a default attack, while right-clicking allows one to focus damage on any of several vital body parts. Weapons range from pistols and knives to grenades and electromagnetic guns, and implants can be used to enhance combat performance.
Buggy crawl across an ugly orb
Tim Cain's Fallout is (even by the standards of its time) one of history's more overrated games, but it arrived during a period in which developers were absolutely terrified of doing an RPG, and it was instantly hailed by atrophied RPGers as the Second Coming. Metal Heart could almost be a sequel to the original franchise, so similar are its interface and play mechanics, but in 2005 that's as much a curse as a compliment.
The story doesn't seem all that terrible, but with a localization this bad, we'll never know. Right from the start, Lanthan and Sheris sound just like Phil Hartman and Janeane Garofalo in a wacky SNL Buck Rogers spoof. You almost feel bad for the actors—who in the world could possibly deliver a line like "I will see it in my nightmares now" well? Hammy writing aside, the story isn't any worse than something from a Roger Corman film; it's the overall pacing of the game itself that's wickedly off somehow. Moving characters across large and mostly non-interactive desolate landscapes—occasionally shooting scorpions and other mutated miscellany—the game simply feels empty and stubbornly slow. Since the entire party moves at the speed of its slowest member, just canvassing one of the game's 150 locations can take dozens of minutes (one player on the game's official message boards reportedly murdered one of his own less agile party members to increase movement speed—yes, it's that slow).
A number of bugs and interface quirks inhabit the retail release, including a frustrating tendency for characters to "throw" their weapons away when firing them is what was intended. Because the game is isometric, and thanks to a poor transparency system, it's common to become "stuck" behind opaque objects during combat, making it difficult or impossible to see what's going on. While there is a world map, the lack of a local automap is unforgivable, and the requisite notepad and pen are in this case an unwelcome reminder of why we won't be bothered with games that require them. Except for occasional burps of audio FX, Metal Heart is an unusually silent game, interrupted on occasion by jarringly out-of-place funk music, but otherwise as devoid of aural goodness as it is of interesting things to do. For all its graphical flourish—and, admittedly, the locales are well rendered and sharply detailed—almost none of Procyon is interactive, thus completing this portrait of a torpid and barren role-playing experience in which characters shuffle from stilted conversations to "Fed Ex" quests and back again.
To its credit, Metal Heart appears to have a solid (as in "crash-free") game engine, a pleasantly detailed (albeit mimed) combat system and—when the hambone localization isn't wrecking things—a decent post-apocalyptic rip of a story. Fans of this style of older-school RPG will still be put off by the snail-paced movement system and static environments, but might find an acceptable game buried under mounds of requisite patience.
The best thing about Metal Heart is its budget price—just 20 bucks—and the imminent release of an international patch that reportedly makes sweeping improvements to the game ... if not to the crummy acting. —Matt
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