The press material and instruction booklet for Wild Metal say something about a futuristic back story. Apparently, robotic tanks have ruled the three planets of the Tehric system for centuries. Developed as war machines, these tanks apparently viewed "The Terminator" one too many times and decided to wipe out all biological life. Now, the humans have come back to the Tehric worlds and are using their own super tanks to capture vital power cores and destroy the machines, once and for all.

But forget about all that. It doesn’t matter. In this game, all you’ll be doing is spending hours and hours driving around bland, mountainous backgrounds, trying to decipher the ’radar’ display while attempting to carry out your mission.

Monotonous is a good way to describe this game. Considering the exciting, if cliched, back story, you’d think that Wild Metal would let gamers actually FEEL like they’re trying to save humanity from ruthless enemies. Instead, the enemies you face are mind–numbingly stupid, tiny in number, and easy to dispatch. So much for advanced AI warriors! In between the all–too–easy encounters with enemy units, you will spend a LOT of time driving around huge game levels.

Despite the promises of non–linear game play and unique planetary surfaces, what you get is an endless, slow–paced tour through mountain valleys as you search for the power cores. The twists and turns in these canyons are numerous and confusing, and while you can drive over some low hills, the high mountains are virtually impassable. What you’re left with is basically an unmappable maze, worse than any of the recent dungeon–crawl games that have been released. The bland backgrounds don’t help, either.

Aside from the one color designated for dirt, I found no difference at all between the three worlds in the game. Everything looked identical! Combine this with the confusing mazelike quality of the levels described above, and losing your way is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Endless hours are spent just driving around, trying to find your way to your next target. For an action game, this is certain death. The confusing, far–too–large radar screen doesn’t add anything to help this title.

The other graphics aren’t any better. The tanks and fortresses and other vehicles are just blocky, texture–mapped polygons, looking more like vehicles from the original Descent (released in 1994) than Dreamcast graphics. Given the utter lack of detail in the backgrounds and the scarcity of enemies on the screen, there’s no excuse for this inclusion in a nextgen game.

The sounds effects do redeem this game — but only slightly. The tanks offer a nice rumble and the cannon shots sound rather cool. But considering that nothing much really HAPPENS in this game, it’s not much of a saving grace.

In fact, the only other saving grace is the multiplayer mode. It is kind of fun to play tanks with a friend, blasting him to flaming bits of metal from afar. But the regular game play issues mentioned above taint even this mode. The levels remain bland and monotonous, the radar is hard to use, the cannon isn’t nearly as accurate as it should be, and you still end up spending way too much time driving around trying to find your target!

While there’s nothing really hideously wrong with this game, the combination of boring game play, difficult controls, and extremely lame graphics drag it down to WWF Attitude level. This game would be interesting, albeit boring, as an early N64 game, but as a recent Dreamcast release, it fails miserably. Unless you really like slow tanks driving around terrain that always looks the same, Wild Metal is better off in the scrap heap.

Overall Game Rating: C–

Rockstar Games website

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