BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Artdink
Release Date: 28th November 2003
While strange game concepts and budget Japanese developers are nothing new to Midas's publishing library, I draw the line at a fighting game for construction vehicles. With a 16 stage story mode, 15 playable characters, and 20 special attacks, Battle Construction vehicles seems to have a lot to offer. The characters featured in the game are drawn in an anime style, with both animations and still pictures used in cutscenes.
The plot itself is pretty contrived and pads itself out with ridiculous attempts at humour, irrelevant events and any other excuses it can make for a 'Construction Vehicle Battle' to occur. The dubbed voice acting in story sequences is of very low quality, and the faux British accents only serve to make things worse. Every now and then there are even grammatical errors in the large sequences of text between battles.
Battles always take place inside of a fairly small (compared to the vehicles themselves) construction site arena, with many obstacles which only serve to get in the way whenever they can. The turning circle of almost every vehicle is absurdly large, making it hard to execute any real strategy. After almost completing the game I'm still unaware of what the controls exactly are; the d-pad is used for movement, but sometimes stops working and seems to boost at random. The X button is used for a defensive move which brings girders out of the ground, and the remaining face buttons are supposedly used for attacks, although I can't say they ever seemed to work for me.
Special attacks can be used sometimes, but they seem to be available randomly as I pulled one off once without even touching the controller. These special attacks darken the screen so that only the vehicles are visible before pulling off all manner of strangely themed moves which seem to do less damage than you'd anticipate. Every now and then, enemies are also able to regain some of their health, which can be annoying. All in all, battles are won almost randomly as very little strategy can be used; especially towards the end of the game.
Graphically the game is fairly poor for PS2 standards, despite the fact that it comes on a DVD-ROM, unlike most Midas games. The cutscenes and animated parts do look decent, however. There's nothing of note musically to accompany battles, and even if there was, the sounds of crunching metal and badly dubbed Japanese men would soon drown it out.
Overall Battle Construction Vehicles has a badly thought out plot, poor core gameplay, horrific controls and an almost laughable concept. The most enjoyable part of the game is being amused at its utter absurdity, but past this I can see no reason why it should have ever been released. This has to be a candidate for worst game idea ever.
Rating: 21/100
Grade: F
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