Introduction
Robot Battle is a hardcore simulator created by website-based Garage Games. The thing is, it’s both hardcore and for even the interested. The whole purpose of the game is to program your robot in order to, well, feel good about yourself and compete against others on the internet. There is no goal, no objective except to program your little to be as strategic and intelligent as possible. The thing is, the only thing that will bring you into this game is the fact that YOU brought up that robot that is spinning around the screen and shooting the other robot that maybe your friend or someone else programmed.

Gameplay
The game play is the true, strong beating heart of Robot Battle. Before continuing, you must know that this game requires lots of programming with a somewhat complex nature. Fortunately, there is a deep tutorial in the help section that can help any beginner start a robot, but not get much further than that. Even the creators suggest that you have some experience with things like C++ and Visual Basic under your belt before tackling this game. That being said, one of the larger strengths of RB is how much you can customize it. Everything can be tweaked: the arena size, number of robots, teams, number of games, ammo limits. This game was meant to be a huge hardcore programming heaven. With that, the game becomes a good learning tool for those that want to start programming. Your robots grow as you grow with skill, which will frustrate “newbies” (those absolutely new to programming) and delight people that have been programming for years. This is a huge downside that could turn many people away. In addition, within the first five minutes you may be searching for an objective to this game. There isn’t one, no missions, nothing. Even the most basic simulation games have some objectives to strive for. You could say that making your robot the best is an objective, but with the default programmed robots, there isn’t much to “play” against. Yes, you don’t control your robot. That is the whole point of the programming the robot, so you can watch it as it reacts to the coding you put into it. What may add some challenge to the game, is finding a friend to pit your robot against his. This fact will be expanded when the Robot Battle community and official competitions are implemented sometime in January 2003. Until then, there are several sites springing up with their own competitions.

Story
Considering this is a game concerning robots, you would expect to see some pretty awesome robot parts and builds. Well, you do see robots. RB soul focus is the programming part, and it shows in the graphics and sound. For one, there is only one sound you will actually hear, there is about a three second start up sound that fails to impress. So unless you own a lot of techno music on your computer, don’t expect to be grooving to funky tunes while the robots battle it out. Also, just so you don’t get your expectations too high, there are no sweet 3D robots. They get to about the size (on screen) of about twice your thumbnail and there are eight different default models and the game allows you to your own custom import body, radar, and gun illustrations for use. The area background that the robots battle on is rather plain in itself. An image can be selected from your files for the middle, and there are several default tiles that can be set as the arena’s flooring, but that’s about it (unless you wish to put your wallpaper or something on it). No stunning visuals or ear candy in this one, folks.

Graphics
As for replay value, it all depends on what you put into it. You could continually add to the robot, make different skins for the robots and arena. It all depends on the community, which is starting to grow fairly well, but it makes one wonder how long they will last after the official site’s launch.

Sound
I cannot recommend this game to much anyone just because of the fact that it totally rests on the community to keep it afloat. Without much to look at but endless coding and perhaps some strategy (besides running around and shooting the other robots?), this game is dead in the water, even for fifteen dollars. I would expect something like this from a freeware game, but this, no. Steer clear unless you are really into programming or learning to program with the basics.