Battle: Los Angeles Review (Xbox 360 Arcade)

STAFF REVIEW of Battle: Los Angeles

Wednesday, April 13, 2011.
by Brent Roberts

Normally I would try to tie this review in some way to drive excitement, however with Battle: Los Angeles all I can do is question the sanity of those who purchase this. With Microsoft recently releasing quality Xbox 360 Arcade titles for their "House Party," Konami has thrown their hat into the ring with their latest first person shooter Battle: Los Angeles.

Ok first things first, there are a lot of first person shooters on the XBLA and so right off the bat Battle: LA has its work cut out for it. Also with the release of some major retail titles, it's easy to see that this could be passed over. Does Battle: Los Angeles deliver an experience that makes you think to yourself thank God I bought that game? Sadly no. We here at XboxAddict take pride in making sure you don't waste your valuable Microsoft Points, and sadly Battle: Los Angeles should only be picked up if it's on sale for 400 MS Points or lower, and you are really looking for an easy 200 gamerscore.

That all being said you're probably wondering why would Konami bring out such a cheap knock off of a mix of CoD and War of the Worlds? We wonder the same thing. To start things off the story is done in cell shaded comic cut scenes, which aren't so bad, but the voiceovers are so bad that you could possibly make a claim for torture.

The story itself is laughable as you fight these onion headed lumbering aliens who are apparently attacking Los Angeles. On top of all this goodness the story itself is ridiculously short. It is quite possible to complete the game from beginning to end in less than 30 mins. The only benefit of this is that it makes multiple run throughs very quick considering you will need to since the difficulty achievements do not stack. Right now I'm just hanging my head b/c Konami forces you to play through the same horrible nightmare multiple times. Now that we have established that the story is not only short, but limp and weak as well, let's turn our attention to this gameplay.

For those who have kept reading this review, I applaud your diligence and I do hope you are learning why this game needs to be avoided like the plague. In first person shooter games you would naturally think that hit detection would be something that should be focused on, maybe though the person at Konami in charge of that was sick or something. In Battle: LA the only weapon you really need is the sniper rifle. With this overpowered cannon you are able to take out enemies with one shot to the head... sometimes.

Let me give you a couple of scenarios: 1) You are a few feet away and right in front of your enemy, you take aim with the sniper rifle and you send a round through the eye and the enemy lives. 2) Same situation but you hit next to the eye and the enemy dies. To compound this frustration it becomes next to impossible to kill the enemies while they are moving. You can unload multiple rounds from the sniper into a moving enemy and accomplish nothing. Oh I almost forgot, have you ever heard people who exercise say "I've hit a wall" when they feel that they can't continue? Well in Battle: LA, you almost literally do. Your character can sprint however, as soon as his sprint is over you almost stop dead in your tracks. This is very disorienting as it literally makes you feel like you've hit a wall every time you end your sprint.

We here at XboxAddict want to take a moment to say something nice about this horrendous failure. The graphics are decent. There's probably the one nice thing you can say about this game, because you can't say it has multiplayer because it doesn't. Yep that makes sense to deliver a first person shooter without multiplayer and instead just give you a pathetic first person campaign right? Why Konami ever did that is a question we would like to have answered. The sound of Battle: LA does have moments, but they are few and far between and unfortunately the negatives far outweigh the few moments that your ears don't bleed.

We here at XboxAddict want to apologize for literally taking minutes away from your life by reading this. This is a game that Konami should never have released and if you are like us and have a positive opinion of that company, and then don't download this because it will taint your impressions of the company. The gameplay is horrendous, and the whole lack of multiplayer makes Battle: LA absolutely worthless. I can't stress enough how the only redeeming quality of this title is that there are achievements (that don't stack). Remember what we said earlier about buying this when it was on sale for 400 MS Points? Forget that, wait till it's free.

Suggestions: Konami, this is something that should have been developed more before being released as it is. Even though this is a triumphant example of garbage, we still have faith in you.

Overall: 4.1 / 10
Gameplay: 1.0 / 10
Visuals: 6.0 / 10
Sound: 5.5 / 10

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