Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars

Konami jumps into the handheld strategy arena with Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars.

Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars is an ambitious RTS game that, unfortunately, suffers in comparison to Advance Wars since it lacks much of the depth and complexity that made the latter game so compelling. As the prototypically reluctant teen hero, Cage, you join forces with a Martian resistance group against the oppressive Earth-based UNSF in an engaging story of corporate terrorism and the use of mainstream media as a propaganda tool.

Advance Wars?in Space
The presentation of The Fist of Mars will be familiar to anyone who has played Advanced Wars: You and the computer alternate moving your mech units along a grid, and engage in turn-based combat against one another. A lack of deep variation between units, objectives, and terrain, however, keeps the routine seek-n-destroy missions from being as challenging as they could have been. The default IAS Battle mode, in which you use a cursor to score a hit or evade enemy fire, is problematic because it?s too easy to avoid being hit by an opponent?so easy, in fact, that you can get through a dozen missions without suffering a single casualty.

Plight of the Enders
Other than the anime-style graphics that accompany the dialogue mode, the animation is limited to small vignettes of LEVs attacking one another during battle. The Fist of Mars does boast a strong musical score, and the sound effects are very well done. The interface is intuitive and the menus easy to navigate, while the controls are very responsive in the IAS mode. Though Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars features a solid story, the strategy elements are too wan to hold interest for too long, and the lack of a multiplayer mode kills its long-term replay value. For a better fight, stick with Advance Wars.

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