Metal Arms: Glitch in the System

Metal Arms: Glitch in The System is the first, and so far only game in the Metal Arms franchise. It is a third-person action shooter developed by the now defunct Swingin' Ape Studios and published by Vivendi Universal and Sierra Entertainment on November 18, 2003 in North America for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It was released on April 21, 2008 for Xbox 360 through Xbox Originals.

Gameplay
Gameplay is in a third-person perspective. Over seventeen weapons are accessible to the player, most of which can be upgraded through the use of upgrade kits strewn about in various locations in the Campaign. The game provides a multitude of standard-fare shooter weapons, such as the flamethrowers, machine guns, and grenades to push through levels with brute force. It also includes the Control Tether, which allows the player to directly control enemy forces and use their own firepower against them. The game contains four difficulty modes, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Nuts of Steel.

Although level design is linear, there is more than one way to complete objectives.

Multiplayer


Up to four players can compete in multiplayer mode in the Xbox and Gamecube versions of the game, but this number is limited to two in the PlayStation 2 version. The PlayStation 2 version contains an exclusive map called Mac Mines.

There are seven modes of play:
 * Bot Brawl - Comparable to Deathmatch. The first bot to gain a set number of kills wins.
 * Team Bot Brawl - Similar to Bot Brawl, except players are split up into teams and share scores.
 * Possession Melee - Players cannot directly attack other players, instead they must control or recruit other Bots to gain points.
 * King of The Hill - Players must gain control of a certain place in the level for a selected amount of time in order to win.
 * Moving Hill - Same as King of The Hill, but the control point moves.
 * Tag - Players must "tag" (kill) a player. The killed player then becomes "it." Whoever has been "it" the least after a time limit expires wins.
 * Reverse Tag - The objective is to become tagged by destroying an opponent and then staying that way for as long as possible.

The game begins with four multiplayer levels unlocked, with the rest unlocked by finding set numbers of Secret or Speed Chips in the Campaign. Players can create custom-made game variants for use in multiplayer, which allows them to enable and disable certain modes and objects during gameplay.

Setting
Metal Arms is set on a fictional planet known as Iron Star, which was built by an ancient race, known as the Morbots, out of scrap metal and space junk. The Morbots are rumored to inhabit Iron Star's core to the present day, where none of the surface dwellers dare venture, for fear of deactivation and destruction. As the life of Droids evolved, a renowned scientist known as Dr. Exavolt began experimenting with Droid technology, attempting to evolve Droid technology far beyond its current limits. One of his experiments ended in disaster, and inadvertently resulted in the tyrannical military mastermind known as General Corrosive. Corrosive began manufacturing a race of soldiers known as Milbots, or Mils for short, and enslaved the entire Droid race of Iron Star. Droids who rebelled against Corrosive were deactivated and recycled. Colonel Alloy, a former architect, established a hidden Droid settlement known as Droid Town, where he and the Droid Rebellion make their final stand against the Mils.

Story
The story begins with Glitch, the protagonist, being found deactivated in one of the many ruins throughout ironstar by Droid rebels. He is reactivated in Droid Town, the last stronghold for the rebellion, where it is discovered that Glitch's memory has been erased. As soon as he is brought up to date on the rebellion, the droidmines are attacked by mil grunts who did brake through the other side of the minesystem; Glitch aids in the defense of the mines and later droid town. After destroying the Mil mines, intruding grunts flooded droid town. Glitch managed to destroy all of the intruders, with the eception of vlax, a commanding grunt who escaped in the chaos of the battle. Glitch pursues vlax, with the intention of destroying him before he can report the location of Droid Town to General Corrosive. While beeing on the chase after the escaped grunt, glitch traverses all kinds of environments, wastelands, mil craterbase, communication arrays and R&D labs alike. At the end of the R&D facility glitch reunites with krunk, who was captured by the mils earlier and later found to have escaped on his own. While the two are having a conversation about glitch still not managing to retrieve krunks secret morbot energychip after vlax took it from him while captured, vlax escapes again, but this time in the R.A.T. that krunk had snagged and modified after the grunts escaped out of the milmines and entered droid town. Eventually glitch manages to destroy vlax and retrieve krunks chip after a long chase through the wastelands with zobby as the driver and glitch as the gunner of a stolen mil R.A.T.

When Glitch returns to Droid Town, he is told that a chip exists in Mil City that would allow the rebellion to shut down the Mils permanently. Glitch takes a lift down into the Morbot region after opening the lift with his palm. While beeing down there, he finds a captured droid named slosh, a toaster-wielding pyromanic robot that seems to always be suffering from great stress. In other words, he posesses a very overexcited personality. He is freed by glitch after the water that held him captive was redirected through removing the plug in the waterbasin with a loader. After later meeting back up with slosh, glitch tells him that he wants to go to mil city via the lift but that the power is gone. Slosh happily jumps at the opportunity to help glitch get to Mil City, telling him he can turn the power back on by reactivating Reactor Core. After doing that, he later meets back up with glitch, telling him that the lift is ready and gives him his toaster as a gift. Riding the lift back the surface of ironstar and into Mil City, glitch traverses the city while at times disguising himself as a second class citizen/slave or as a droidspy while in the factory. Eventually he sneaks into the droid spy factory and steals the mil oprating system chip, that he then delivers it to the rebels who also snuck into the city with the intention to smuggle the chip out of the city. After a short trip through the ruins of ironstar with the objective of finding and collecting all parts of a droid spy named agent goff, (a mil grunt that worked undercover for the droids, but was exposed and disassembled by the mils) that he then returns to the city and to reassemble him. While goff gave his speech, glitch learned that Dr. Exavolt is alive and being held prisoner in Mil City. Glitch finds Exavolt and brings him back to Droid Town. Once there, Exavolt calls corrosive to initiate the invasion of droid town, revealing that he is in control of the Mils and that he is the one seeking to enslave droidkind. Glitch helps in the defense of Droid Town, but is captured himself and taken to the Mil Colosseum by a trooper. He escapes from the Colosseum by faking his own destruction.

Glitch reestablishes contact with the rebellion. While almost everyone is safely in hiding, one of Glitch's friends, Zobby, was taken to the mil spacestation by Exavolt. Glitch proceeds to steal a R.A.T. and "race to the rocket" as the level title accuratly puts it. Glitch then sneaks onto the spaceshuttle that Exavolt is in just in time before it takes of and takes a flight on it to the mil spacestation. Finally, the shuttle docks with a space station in hiding behind a fake moon in orbit over Iron Star.

After fighting through the spacestation, glitch manages to find zobby in the tower that is standing in the middle of corrosives giant controlroom. After collecting four chips for the controlconsole, he takes control of General Corrosive, and initiates the permanent shutdown of the Mils. Seeing that the station is lost, Exavolt begins a self-destruct countdown in the station. Glitch and Zobby escape in an escape pod and land back on Iron Star. Once back on the surface, Glitch is challenged one last time by General Corrosive who now is vulnerable because his impenetrable chassis was damaged in the fall from space. Glitch defeats him and is received as a hero for destroying the Mils, while Exavolt, watching from his shuttle in orbit, vows revenge.

Droid Mines

 * 1. Hero Training:

Mil Mines

 * 2. Do Ore Die:


 * 3. Seal The Mines:

Droid Town

 * 4. Clean Up


 * 32. Unwelcome Home

Wastelands

 * 5. Wasteland Thunder


 * 6. They Live


 * 7. Wasteland Journey


 * 8. Mozer, Schmozer


 * 9. The ZombieBot King


 * 18. Wasteland Chase


 * 37. Race to the Rocket


 * 42. Final Battle

Mil Comm Center

 * 10. Into The Trenches


 * 11. Infiltrate the Compound


 * 12. Destroy Comm Arrays


 * 13. Hold Your Ground

Mil R & D Labs

 * 14. What Research?


 * 15. The Search for Krunk


 * 16. F&!?ing Krunked


 * 17. You Know The Drill

Morbot Region

 * 19. Morbot City


 * 20. I, Predator

Morbot Factory

 * 21. The Reactor Core

Morbot Reactor

 * 22. Fire It Up

Mil City Hub

 * 23. The Hand Is Mightier


 * 24, Find The Spy Factory


 * 26. Access The Ruins


 * 29. Secret Rendezvous

Mil Spy Factory

 * 25. Unhandled Exception

Ruins of Iron Star

 * 27. Seen Better Days


 * 28. The Sniper's Lair

Mil City Center

 * 30. Bright Lights, Mil City


 * 31. Get to the Tower

Coloseum

 * 33. 15 Minutes


 * 34. Round Two


 * 35. Last Bot Standing


 * 36. Fall to Pieces

Mil Space Station

 * 38. One Small Step


 * 39. Fully Operational


 * 40. Bring It Down


 * 41. General Corrosive

Reception
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System was given favorable reviews, with an average score of 82% on Metacritic, praising its humor and gameplay, but criticizing its high difficulty. Lack of marketing saw the title, despite good reception, fail to reach a wider audience and thus commercially underperform.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack to the game has been released digitally and is currently free to download from GameSpot.