Gungriffon is a robot fighting game with a long history. The original Gungriffon series began on the Sega Saturn, and then in 2000 the PlayStation 2 came out with Gungriffon Blaze.

Gungriffon Allied Strike is very much like the MechAssault series. You and your team of giant robots must battle through the world, slaying enemies. In this release, it's the near future. Earth's resources are exhausted, and war has erupted.

As in most robot games, you move from mission to mission, building up your skills and weaponry as you go. You begin in Burma, then move on through other parts of the globe, fighting off enemy forces.

The graphics are reasonably nice but are not nearly as good as you might expect from a recent XBox release. The trees look like paintings which gives them nice colors but fuzzy definition. The main view is completely cluttered with too-dark items. They could have done a much better job with the cockpit design and translucence. There's a third person view, but you lose some important gauges if you switch.

The music and sounds are all right, but again not stellar. The voices are very simple, and the music is a traditional 'exciting battle' loop.

Compared to the MechAssault series, this is much more "arcady". MechAssault goes all out for realism, with heavy, slow, ponderous mechs. The mechs that are quick are also lightly

There is an XBox Live component to this game, but we could find NOBODY online to play with! We tried every combination of match style. None of our "friends" were playing this game. We got to see the variety of ships available for gameplay, but I have to admit we were laughing out loud while we cycled through the empty options. It was a fairly clear indicator that the game was not selling very well.

Gungriffon Allied Strike isn't even available on Amazon, so you'll have to check out your local game stores if you want to track this one down. It might be fun as a stop-gap until Mech Asasult II comes out, but I'd rather wait!

Rating: 3/5