Missile Command
Added July 20th, 2007 by Slunks
The unfortunate side of the Xbox Live Arcade is that it’s easy to notice a classic game you once loved; buy it in high spirits of reliving your childhood; and then realize that it’s a complete, utter mess. Not surprisingly, that’s the same issue Atari has with Missile Command. This remake not only serves as a good way to see an original game fail the test of time, but new portions of the game fall short as well.
The gameplay hasn’t alienated its original mechanics at all. You control the ground which is full of cities and turrets, as missiles rain from the sky. Losing too many cities and turrets will result in the game ending. You use three individual turrets to fire upon missiles, smart bombs (that do their best to avoid your shots), and enemy ships (which also fire more missiles at you). Once all of the missiles have been destroyed, the game moves onto a new, more challenging round that has the exact same premise of the previous round. This may have been exciting thirty years ago, but the tediousness doesn’t stand up to today’s standard.
If interest to try the classic version of the game sets in, it’s available to play. A problem with this version is that it was originally played by using a trackball. The controls that carry over to your analog sticks don’t feel good as you’d want it to. They may provide a decent job, but you won’t be able to get the sharpshooter precision you’ll need. This is especially true for the Throttle Monkey mode, which is available for both new and classic versions of the game. In this mode, gameplay proceeds twice as fast as normal, making things more hectic. In reality, this mode isn’t any more fun than the normal mode. Not to mention the controls are unbearable in the classic version since the cursor is so incredibly sketchy and fast that you have no feel for what you’re doing. Because of this, the entire mode feels a little too tacked on; speeding up the gameplay twice as fast isn’t the most ingenious idea.
Graphically, the new version looks no more than average. Your shots are electric-like tracings that eventually explode, which is actually a cool looking effect. But unfortunately the rest of the game looks rather bland. The ground looks as if it has no more than two shades of extremely low-quality brown textures, and the backdrop doesn’t show anything special. During gameplay, you’ll hear a soon-to-be irritating, overly-energetic techno loop. It does sound decent at first, but much like the rest of the game, it gets old rather fast.
Summary:
While the 400 points may seem like a steal for such a classic game, it’s exactly what brings you in only to push you down. With the lack of its original trackball controller, new and exciting gameplay, and only bringing in tacked-on modes, Missile Command unfortunately won’t meet expectations of ones who had fun with it nearly 30 years ago.
