Six inch tall malevolent robots have invaded the Earth and once again we must rely on children to save us all from certain doom. With the help of the heroic and toyriffic Gotcha Borgs the comically named Death Force will certainly be repelled, but not without a fight. Gotcha Force has a goofy premise, but delivers a good marriage of fighting, shooting, and the addictive collecting gameplay popularised by Pokemon. Add to this a bright, vibrant visual presence and some bad voice acting and you have a recipe for fun.
Playing Gotcha Force is a lot like a Saturday morning cartoon with most of the plot yanked out of it. The voice acting sounds like it was all done in an afternoon with actual 8 year olds reading lines off a sheet of paper. The graphics are very bright and colourful and the character designs range from very mechanical transforming robots to delicate little girls to cowboys and ninjas.
Every class of Borg has distinctive animations and attacks, and the attacks are done in a very satisfyingly overblown manner, with giant energy bursts flying through the arena and people attacking with, among things, giant chainsaw yo-yos. Keeping in touch with a short attention span audience, the combat is extremely fast-paced -- while you can build a strategy based on your Borg line up, this is definitely not a sit and think game. During combat, your computer-controlled buddy will constantly call out to you, and you can hear your enemies' reactions as you take down their Borgs one by one. While it's not a deep game, the mechanics are pretty solid and lead to an entertaining, if strange, experience.
Your Borgs are the heart and soul of the game, and the come in many types. The primary differences in the Borgs are their play style -- some are best in melee, some have great ranged attacks, and some are support classes that can immobilize enemies or heal allies. While this doesn't sound like a lot of variation, the variety of attacks and ability combinations makes each Borg feel fairly distinct, even those who come from the same clan.
There's also a fantastic design range in the Borgs; from Egyptian-themed witches to attack satellites to transforming robots. For the amount of Borgs present in the game, there's an amazing amount of visual variation, even Borgs of the same type can have wildly different designs and the same models don't just get repainted and used again and again. Unfortunately, while the Borgs pop, the arenas that you fight in are pretty bland, characterized by simple box or tower-like obstructions in most cases. You'll be visiting the same arenas many times over as well.
The game isn't without its flaws. While this is a collecting game, like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering, it doesn't follow some of the genre conventions. For instance, you don't really have any Borgs that are strong against another type. Certainly this means that you never face something that is completely invincible to you but it also takes a great deal of strategy out of the game, leaving you to choose Borgs based on style rather than technique. Adding to this is the inability to swap Borgs out in combat. Once you enter combat, you can only use the Borg that is first in your line up until that Borg is killed. Then you move to the next in order, there is no ability to mess with the order once the fight has begun. While the possible annoyance caused by this is somewhat mitigated by the ability to have multiple line ups, it can lead to a situation where you have to try a battle and die before figuring out whether to go with a melee, ranged, or support group.
The biggest problem, however, is the significant frame rate slowdown that occurs when you have a lot of special effects going on at once, which happens most frequently in boss battles, which are already difficult to begin with.
Gotcha Force is not necessarily a shallow game. There is a lot of variation for players to mess around with and building a strategy for certain types of battles is a must. The combat is both intuitive and fast enough that you can easily sit down and play a quick game any time. With 4-person multi-player, a Story Mode that opens new paths as you play it again, and lots of Borgs to collect, it's a game with a pretty long shelf life. If you're looking for something fast, easy, and not afraid to be a little bit cute then Gotcha Force is a great find.
