B TEAM - Metal Cartoon Squad (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

If you mention the phrase 'Squad Based Shooter' to gamers they'll quickly mention the likes of the Tom Clancy series with its highly trained troops and plots involving espionage and worldwide terrorism. Metal Cartoon Squad is a little different because, rather than concentrating on stealth and forward planning, the focus here is fun. That and blowing up just about everything you come into contact with. However it's difficult to get real humor in a console game and few have managed to achieve this. So, let's go to war with B-Team.

Gameplay

As with all shooters the gameplay is just about as simple as it can be. You control a single soldier who is flanked by two other members of his squad and your mission is to invade enemy territory and wipe out the opposition. This is pretty standard stuff, with all three soldiers acting as a unit making killing and destroying both easy and effective. In fact with Easy and Normal difficulty there's nothing here that is likely to cause you any real problems and once you've discovered the properties of each weapon you can generally pick off enemies from a safe distance. The end of level bosses are a little more challenging but once you have discovered their weak points, even these create little difficulty. The only real challenge is uncovering the various pick-ups and collectables and recalling where the health is just before it's required, you will then breeze though each level. The only problem you are actually likely to encounter with each mission is actually finding your way around and you'll often travel in circles trying to locate the little blue circle that is your mission objective, with the map proving little in the way of help.

Clearly a game of this nature needs a good Multiplayer mode and while you do have the ability to play with friends here (with each controlling their own member of the squad) it's still the same environments and repetitive gameplay.

Controls

Your standard d-pad simply moves you and your two men around and while they aim to follow your every move they will occasionally get stuck behind the odd destroyed car or rock.

Graphics

There's been a lot of fuss made about the cartoon visuals but, although the game does have its moments, overall the various characters and environments come off looking scruffy and a little unfinished. There is an upside to all this though is that almost everything is destructible and we all know how much fun just blowing stuff up is.

Sound

Awful music and some fair sound effects but haven't we overdone the 'mumbled' speech effect now?

Dual screen

The stylus here is used to actually fire your weapons: simply touch the screen anywhere and you and your trusted men will fire in that direction. As we've already said there are plenty of weapons and bonus items to pick up around the various levels and while these offer significantly more firepower however they are selected automatically when you move over them and, as the ammunition is limited, once you run out, you'll revert back to your standard and not very powerful sidearm.

Final comments

Metal Cartoon Squad is a mindless fun shooter and gamers will delight in simply mowing down soldiers and blowing up everything in their path. Unfortunately it's not without its problems and, disregarding the poor graphics and sound, the gameplay is much too simplistic and repetitive. It's also far too easy and you'll fly though the 35 missions in no time at all. There's still the multiplayer and unlockables though and there is some enjoyment to be had here, just not as much as there could have been.

Pro: Fully Destructible Environments.
Con: Poor Visuals, Awful Music, Repetitive Gameplay
Final score: 4.3

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