It's got a tough learning curve, but it's a fun exercise in learning about AI in games and the difficulty of getting enemies to "think" and respond believably.
It's set in the future, where corporations have expanded into space in the search for new raw materials... out here on the other planets and moons, government is whoever can claim control of the territory and resources. You're constantly battling other corporations for both of these assets, or rather your robots are. Human life is much harder to maintain out here than robots, so most things are automated with only a very few human overseers.
You have to build mechs... not only choose their design and weapons, but also their AI processes. Each mech's CPU has so many "slots" in it, laid out like a checkerboard. You have to design their thinking/movement responses by putting chips into these slots. The CPU basically comprises an extended flowchart of thinking and actions.... a chip placed into a particular slot will have a particular function such as "Look forward; IF enemy detected, THEN".... and then you'd have to place the next chip to define the action to be taken in that instance. Once your mech is complete, you turn it loose and see how it fares against the enemy's mechs.
The gameplay is slow, ponderous, but there's a decided amount of joy in seeing one of your creations successfully navigate an encounter and emerge victorious.
I have the game, and recommend it as a collectible. Dollar value aside, it's a fascinating game and quite unlike anything else that I've seen... at least on consoles.
