Battlecorps

This is back in the heyday of the Sega/Nintendo golden era. There weren't many console games that put you in the cockpit of a walking tank outside of the PC. The Sega CD brought out one of the few and arguably the best in the console arena. Battlecorps provided an impressive mech simulator along with some fun gameplay and a cool soundtrack to boot. If you were in Battletech or other piloted giant robot stuff this was one of the games to play.What makes Battlecorps stand out? It was the most realistic first person experience. Sure the SNES had Mechwarrior in first person (and it had a pretty nifty mech build feature too), but when you get out to the battlefield movement was, for lack of a better term, tankish. You just moved smooth. It didn't feel like you were on a lumbering mech. Battlecorps made a little innovative change to that issue by making your first person perspective look like you were moving on two giant legs. Just that little bounce up and down and the sound effects of the legs moving make the difference. Back then this game got many kudos and positive reviews... just for the lurching motion.In addition to the simulated movement the cockpit looks good too with enough status bars and displays to convince you are sitting behind the controls. There is an overall story to explain why you are shooting at everything in sight. You are essentially saving a mining colony from their planetary computer gone rogue. Before each level you have a commander give you some off-center speech over what you about to come across. At the end of the game his dialog gets way off the reservation with a really crazy rant.Gameplay is much like other first person shooters in that you move, shoot and dodge various machine enemies in an environment that is varied depending on which of the 12 levels you are in. The first level is a volcanic wasteland with overheating problems if you hit the lava, another level is in a watery underground cavern, etc, etc. You pick one of three characters to play, with a little bit of difference on the mech's performance (one is faster, one is tougher, and one is balanced). You get powerups along the way like grenades, rockets and a flamethrower to make things interesting.Just to keep things clear this is not a Battletech type game that involves RPG type functionality. You are in a smaller mecha and the gameplay is much like your standard first person shooter. There is no customization of your mech other than the aforementioned character selection. Instead of loadouts pre-level you pick up power-ups and so on. It's a straight action game.A notable feather in Battlecorps cap is the music. One of the great things about the SegaCD was the ability to have pure uncompressed CD quality sounds and music. The soundtrack is by Martin Iveson, who has also done soundtrack music for many of the Tomb Raider games as well as Shellshock 1 & 2, Project Eden, and the Thunderstrike games. On top of that you get guitarist Anthony Wheeldon from the U.K. band State of Grace laying out some really sweet solos and rhythms. The music is mostly rock driven, and when I say that I don't mean Tekken style power metal. I mean slightly bluesy and a lot of tonal variances. Some tracks get more electronic with Wheeldon still laying down his guitar where it suits. All in all this game is worth having just for the music, and since Sega CD game music was pressed in the standard redbook format you can pop the disk into any CD audio reader and enjoy the music.I believed Battlecorps was named best simulator on the SegaCD. If you have a SegaCD this should be part of your collection. If you don't have a SegaCD you may still want to consider it for the relatively unique (and oh so cool) music.