Final Armada PS2 Review

If only transforming was as easy as pressing a button in reality, we’d all be better people, we’d all be able to get rid of our scars, moles and other imperfections and even give ourselves a personality transplant. Sadly this isn’t possible, but if it was it would certainly be very very nice.

Anyway onto the subject of the game, and in spite of what our opening paragraph might suggest Final Armada is not about transforming people. Worry not Transformers fans you still get to drive a vehicle (the upgradeable Aggressor) that can morph between two forms, a wheeled one by default or a hovercraft style with the press of a button.

You can transform whenever you feel like it, but there’s certain situations where a specific form is a requisite. Each form has its own weaponry as well as its strengths and weaknesses. Driving mode allows for shield regeneration and a rather swift top speed for example, although it’s the hover mode that is definitely the most appropriate for the destruction of your opponents. Indeed, this hover mode gives you more flexible movement allowing you to strafe and turn a lot quicker, although pitfalls come in the form of a slower top speed and shields that don’t regenerate (boo!).

Protecting allies, making sure that the last thing that your enemies see is a blinding white flash, and destroying vital objects are your not very original missions (a radar directs you towards your missions and obviously reveals the position of your enemies), but there’s a transforming vehicle involved, which makes a difference. Another thing that makes a little difference is having a wingman accompany you from the air whom you can command to defend or attack.

When you aren’t disintegrating enemies with explosions you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade the Aggressor. This is done by harvesting Nanotech during missions, and upon gathering enough you are then able to fit new weaponry, increase the strength of the shield and so on.

When you’re finished with the single player, that’s unfortunately your lot, at least on the PS2 where multiplayer is non existent. The PSP version on the other hand allows for up to four players to frag each other, making it the better version for its options, although to be fair the PS2 version does control marginally better.

Graphically both versions aren’t anything to write home or shout at the top of your voice from a mountaintop about, although that’s not saying that things are shoddy, but rather a little bland, uninteresting and soulless. In fact the whole package seems to be bordering on the cheap, with text being used to tell the story opposed to voice acting, although perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, as this is one game that would have inevitably have had some laughably bad voice work with a nasty cherry on top.

When all comes to all Final Armada isn’t a bad game, but it’s certainly an average one that we couldn’t imagine living in the memory for any length of time. With that said perhaps it’s a game that is best experienced through rental or upon salvaging from the bottom of a bargain bin.

5/10