Remote Control Dandy SF
This was a strange one as robot games aren’t normally sent my way for review, perhaps mercifully as their staunch fans are, in my experience, often crazy-eyed, blood-penning hate-mail psychopaths who attack reviewers for the tiniest, inconsequential omission. Still, this game was a pleasure to play from start to finish. It’s extremely inventive in execution but tempered with friendly, pick-up and go mechanics so it’s genuinely fun for people who have no interest in such games usually. If you have the means to play Japanese only PS2 games then try it. I think you’ll like it.
Edge magazine. June 2005
PS2. Konami/ Sandlot. Out now (Japan)
Gamers are used to multitasking but this is quite something else. That Remote Control SF requires constant mastery of eleven of the controller’s buttons is not especially remarkable; Steel Battalion saw to that. Rather, here player’s faces are shoved against the boundaries of interface management with both a full set of controls for manoeuvring a fully-functional robot soldier as well as all those needed to control its independent radio-controlling pilot, from whose eyes you view the action. Unlike Sandlot’s previous Tetsujin 28go, which denied simultaneous commander and robot handling, here you really are playing two games at once– one in first person another in third person; post-modern role-play personified.
Each battle, pint sized yellow-suited robot commander, Uni Kawara, and one of his ever-expanding range of robots, visit a destructible environment where you must face either single or multi opponents. Should Uni stray too far from the RC robot then the radio waves won’t reach so finding a nearby safe spot with enough perspective to be able to direct your robot intelligently and effectively is imperative. This characterisation of the camera makes it possible to perch on the robot’s head high in the clouds or to take refuge on a nearby rooftop. With the new control system it’s even possible to dodge your way through the monstrous machines’ legs as you control the battle unfolding above your head.
Taking the robot through the mandatory and ongoing training levels is like learning to ride a bicycle and, once block and counter moves are added to the equation, the whole exercise feels like a vast interactive physics lesson. Getting your robot to land an uppercut initially seems akin to mastering some great martial secret. But after a few encounters you soon settle into the rhythm of dual control and clumsily driving your robot into demolishing the terraced three-story housing you’re simultaneously boosting Uni onto becomes a humorous blip rather than an inevitable misjudgement. Level design is varied but it’s hard to deny that most arenas are designed to simply slow down the progress of both robots meeting for their inevitable face off.
Successful game creation is often a case of refining thirty seconds of gameplay and then stretching them out to fill the whole videogame. Sandlot’s half-minute pitch is as niche as it is inventive. But what could have been an enormously convoluted exercise largely flows with unexpected ease coming together to represent everything wonderful about the short, sharp inventive side of Japanese gaming.
Seven out of Ten