I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little sick of playing games about kids who meet at friendly-looking locations to pit their monsters/robots against each other. Still, a game of this ilk can still grab me if it's made well, but unfortunately, Capcom's Gotcha Force is rather sloppy. This Virtual On/Pokemon hybrid has you running around a single grid battling evil robots, and while there's limited fun to be had, the game is littered with so many "gaming don'ts" it irritates more than satisfies.

Essentially, Gotcha Force is Pokemon with Virtual On controls. A tiny robot (called a Gotcha Borg) named G Red tracks the evil Death Force to Earth, and when he lands (along with his other Gotcha Borg buddies) he immediately befriends a boy named Kou, and thus, an alliance is made. Kou, along with his friends, have to track down the Death Force and destroy them across various locales set within a grid. In other words, the grid represents your town (Safari Town, to be exact.), and you use the cursor on the screen to select where you want to go. Most of the battles involve the Death Force, but sometimes they're between other kids, and if you win, you'll make new friends who'll fight alongside you. More often than not, you'll go into battle with a partner, and while you can only battle with one Borg at a time, if one gets destroyed, the next one takes its place until you either kill everyone (you win) or all of your Burgs are blown to bits (you lose).

The gameplay's pretty fast-paced, so if you love games where everything's exploding and you have no idea what's going on, you may enjoy it. Even I, after a few hours, got into a groove where the game, while not exciting or fun, was a decent way to kill some time. However, Gotcha Force falters in several areas. Its woes begin with the overall purpose of the game, that being, "What am I supposed to be doing?" The game's very few cut scenes don't tell much of a story other than the supposed "evil" Death Force has come to town. All you do is hop around the board and revisit the same environments for hours without objectives of any sort other than to kill everything, which, while enjoyable, quickly becomes repetitive. Worse are the battles between other kids. If this terrifying legion of robots has invaded Earth, why am I fighting snot-nosed brats? It came to the point where I didn't know who the enemy was anymore because each battle was the same. It quickly degenerated into a mindless blast fest that begged the question, "When the heck is this over?"

Gotcha Force's problems don't stop with its boring gameplay. The visual and aural components are also lacking in quality. The graphics are strictly first generation Dreamast (think of a high-res Tech Romancer) that insults Nintendo's hardware. The Gotcha Borgs are passable, but the environments are filled with blocks devoid of detail and you'll see them quite often. You'll also be subjected to listening the same tunes, a horrible collection of music that offers only one memorable track.

If the score doesn't irritate you, the voice acting certainly will. Instead of recording voices, Capcom went with grunts and other assorted noises, so a sentence such as "Gotcha Force is really boring" comes out as "WAHHHH!"

Gotcha Force's controls reminded me a lot of Sega's Virtual On series, where you can dash in several direction and fire off burst shots and huge single attacks, and just as Virtual On's controls were frustrating, so are Gotcha Force's. Jumping is a huge pain in the butt, made even more annoying when enemies are high up and your Borg is vertically challenged and lacks a good shooting attack. Virtual On was made to use a special twin stick peripheral and Gotcha Force shares that control scheme. However, we don't have a special twin stick peripheral, and as for the Gamecube controller, forget it!

Lastly, we come to the camera. It's not as nauseating as Capcom's other disaster, Dino Crisis 3, but when I really needed it to get out of a jam, it failed every time. When attacked from the air, the ground becomes transparent and the camera sweeps under your butt so you can look to the sky, but it completely ignores the enemies shooting at you from the ground. You also wont have a clue where you're going. Several times, I got lost underneath a structure because the camera automatically went underneath me, so all I was looking at was the ceiling.

The game does have some redeeming qualities, though they're few and far between. For starters, there are well over 200 Gotcha Borgs to collect, and many of them are pretty cool. I was partial to the ninjas, but there are others that can fly, shoot rockets and come armed with giant chain guns, though it irked me how most of them can only fire in short bursts (you have to wait a bit to reload). The constant collecting keeps things fresh, and there's a multiplayer component so you and some friends can destroy each other, though you'll have to do it two on two (or battle the Death Force co-op). You can also trade Borgs with friends, so if your buddy has a Cutter Ninja he never uses, he'll be yours by completing a simple memory card transfer.

It actually pains me to give Gotcha Force such a low score because I wanted it to be one of those quality niche games that I love while everyone else goes "Huh?" However, Capcom's latest is so low on substance I'm surprised that it retails for $40, and shouldn't be considered unless it's in a bargain bin, or you're looking for a colorful robot game for your kid(s). If it's for your children, it's a safe alternative to the more violent games on the market, but if you're looking for a satisfying killer robot experience, leave this one alone.