The reality you know is under threat. The reality that you know has been infected with a retroactive virus capable of rewriting history in its own image. The reality you know must end in order to save it.

At an indeterminable point in mankind’s future, ordered society has reverted to a feudal state, scattered groups of survivors huddled together in small villages and nomadic enclaves. Mankind is running scared of the greatest threat to its existence since reality first spluttered into existence.

Decades ago, the face of the planet changed, entire cities disappeared overnight, and whole countries vanished. Left in their place were creatures, hideous shambling monstrosities, technology advanced, and yet intellectually retarded; and as mankind would soon discover, this was an enemy that could not be stopped and killed. Strike one down, and it would be reborn without so much as a scratch.

In the dark years ahead, when our enemies are but warped reflections of ourselves, and where our allies may be more than they seem, a boy, his sister, and rag-tag assembly of unlikely warriors are the planets last hope. But as they soon discover, immortality comes at a price. Twisting perceptions, time and emotions Future Tactics is a tale of love, loss, hope and some mean green ugly muthas.

In other words, Future Tactics: The Uprising is a turn-based tactical RPG that's built around a highly complex battle engine, featuring a Story Mode and a two-player Battle Mode. Future Tactics: The Uprising comprises 18 3D environments, 19 levels, deformable terrain, fully animated and voiced cut scenes, a two-player customizable battle mode, the ability to custom build your team members with upgrades, and a Boot Camp tutorial mode. Ohh and apparently some mean green ugly muthas.

Gameplay:

As the title suggests, this game is set in the future where creatures have taken over the earth. Bands of humans are left to fight for survival and rid the earth of these “creatures”. The game begins with the main character, Low, and his father who is cunning known simply as “Father” to avoid any confusion, after “father” bites the dust. Low and his sister “Pepper” (where do they get these names?) are out for revenge and an eventual peace, in the mean time they unleash the condiments of war!

For those gamers familiar with the strategy genre will feel right at home here, battles are turn based and each character can move with a certain range and use two different types of attacks, these are Line of sight and Ballistic trajectory. Line of sight attack involves the player moving a target over the enemy, and stopping it at the exact moment needed, at first this is a bit fiddly but is easily mastered and works quite well. Ballistic Trajectory switches to the familiar overhead view and allows you to damage enemies within your range.

At the end of your turn you get the standard option to rest, defend or heal your characters. Future Tactics does do a number of things right, one of the nice features is the ability to skip through the numerous cut scenes. There are some not so nice features though, the AI is possibly dumber than a Miss World contest, with your enemies often killing themselves but accident, maybe they should be dumb muthas instead of mean green muthas.

Graphics

The graphics of Future Tactics has a clean feel too it, reminiscent of Mario on the N64, the cartoon graphics are presented in a cartoon fashion as opposed to high detailed jobbies of other strategy games. Despite being clean there is nothing richly detailed and the general layout of the levels looks as though objects have been randomly placed in the environment.

Sound:

This is where the budget for the game starts to show through, the voice acting is a somewhat brusque British accent affair, so this means that in the future the British rule the world again! The characters mouths really don’t match up to what is being said at all. Then we come onto the music, a very limited track that manages to get on your nerves before the second chorus is finished. The in game sound effects are a let down, the sound of a decent explosion surely cannot be too difficult to sample? Unless you get too close of course.

Longevity:

Since the actual A.I. is such a shocker in this game you will be looking for a friend to play this with. The multi player mode suffers like a lot of other multi player options on the current crop of games, requiring you to have played a fair way into the game on the single player option so you have unlocked the maps to play on. Now this game is Xbox Live AWARE, not multiplayer, just AWARE so it will keep you updated apparently, how good is that? Not a lot as this would have been an interesting Live Multiplayer game.

Round up:

Future Tactics is a budget release, so some of its short fallings can be excused by the price tag, but ultimately this game is neither one thing or the other, it is not challenging enough to be a fully fledged RPG or have enough bad mutha action in it to be classed as a 3rd person action shooter romp. A lot of the games problems arise from the poor AI and the repetitive graphical environment. The game does have some enjoyable moments but it is still a good introduction to the RPG genre for new gamers on a budget, more experienced gamers will not get a lot out of this release.