Have you ever wanted to jump inside a 42-foot-tall robot armed to the teeth with cruise missiles, chainsaws, and gatling guns that can without much effort incinerate an entire city? If that's the case, Iron Soldier is the game for you.

If you hadn't already guessed, Iron Soldier is a mech combat simulator, somewhat similar to games such as Mechwarrior or Armored core, only with one slight difference - the size of your mechanized war contraption. In Iron Soldier, you pilot a machine that dwarfs the common man and can crush houses and trees as if they were ants under your feet. And speaking of pests...there are an awfully large number of irritating forces that stand in the way of your success: tanks, helicopters, bombers, gun/missile turrets, and even other iron soldiers.

[GRAPHICS]

Smooooth is the word of the day. Everything looks clean-cut, and the game has a very high frame rate, albeit at the expense of detail. The only things I could see with any kind of texture mapping were some building walls, and on many of the mobile enemies.

This is a bit of a disappointment, and takes away from the reality of the game, but little graphical tricks here and there make up for the bland look that runs rampant. Explosions are very nice, for instance - virtually everything in this game can be destroyed, resulting in a nice colouful flame display followed by chunks of whatever it was that you destroyed flying everywhere. But buildings explode into perfect cubes, giving the impression that all the skyscrapers and apartments are made out of Lego.

..still, it does look pretty neat, especially the slight delay before the building breaks apart when assaulting these works of architecture with missiles.

Oh yeah, you can even see your feet when you look down, and your arms when you look to the side. The landscape bobs up and down whenever you walk, also ...if it wasn't for the lack of textures, this would be VERY real. As it stands, the graphics provide a vaguely realistic and very appealing visual style. Quite excellent.

[SOUND FX/MUSIC]

Iron Soldier runs into a bit of a snag when it comes to the sounds... see, the music is fine, and the sound effects are great...but here's the catch - when you have the music turned on, certain sound effects are muted and/or lost entirely. For instance, when helicopters are near, you can hear the sound of their propellers, but that's only when the music is turned off - often times a helicopter can sneak up on you if you aren't constantly watching your radar.

But if you turn the music off completely, there are times when there is overwhelming silence, except for the stomping of your iron soldiers feet... the music is fairly important. Anyway, this category would excel if it weren't for this little problem. But even with it, the sound and music are far above average.

[GAMEPLAY]

There is alot to do in Iron Soldier...if you like blowing things up, well, there's plenty of that here. If you like blowing things up with a variety of weapons, well, there's plenty of that here, too. And if you like blowing things up in a variety of locations, well lookie here, there's a whole load of destructible destinations in this brave little game to keep you busy for awhile. That is, if you can nail the control.. not that it's hard, but it takes some getting used to.

[OVERALL]

If you have a Jaguar, you won't be dissapointed with Iron Solider, and it's one of the more common and cheap games you can find these days on places such as Ebay.ca, or even Dentec(Be warned, Dentec charges an arm and a leg for shipping [added 07/19/03: It looks like Dentec has closed down]).

It's a blast to play, after you work past the somewhat complicated controls. 16 difficult missions will keep you playing for a long time to come, and several difficulty levels might even add to the replay if you feel like trying things again with more of a challenge. Personally, I like to use the infinite weapon cheat code (in the option screen, hit 2,7,2,8,3,7 and the screen will flash)...

[GRAPHICS] - 8.9/10

[SOUND FX/MUSIC] - 7.5/10

[GAMEPLAY] - 9.6/10

[OVERALL] - 9.3/10 (not an average)