Tri Level Battlefield
Sky, earth, and underground
As you can see from the screenshots, Metal Fatigue is an isometric perspective RTS game, but the action takes place on three distinct levels. Primarily you'll be worrying about what's happening on the ground. It's on the ground where you'll be keeping most of your structures and fighting many of your battles. You'll also be warring over lava wells that gather energy (money) on the ground. However, fighting also takes place up on orbital platforms in the sky. You'll use teleporters to get most of your combots and units up there but if you have jetpack equipped combots they can get from sky to ground and platform to platform without any help. In the sky you can make solar collectors to get more energy (money) for your economy. Finally there's an underground level which also houses lava pits for energy. Drills must be used to tunnel around, and it is possible to tunnel into an enemy area and use their elevators to do a surprise raid.
![Metal Fatigue Preview [ Bots wearing sneakers? @ 640 x 480 ] > View Full-Size in another window.](images/11-s.jpg) Bots wearing sneakers?
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![Metal Fatigue Preview [ Battle at the chokepoint @ 640 x 480 ] > View Full-Size in another window.](images/12-s.jpg) Battle at the chokepoint
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Keeping track of it all
In order to keep track of everything, you can bring up three minimaps that show you the sky level, the ground, and the underground levels. These can be displayed singly or all at once. So while Metal Fatigue doesn't give you 3D freedom in the way that Homeworld will, the three level battlefield means that you can't become too narrow and focused on one aspect of the war - careless players will get bum rushed from above and below. Bear in mind though that combots are not the only units in Metal Fatigue - there's a good selection of tanks, bombers, artillery, air to air fighters, and stationary towers that also share in the battle. Combots are the focus of any good attacking force, but the other units will be needed for support purposes. You'll use energy to build all these weapons but you'll also need cryo farms to produce the manpower to pilot all these vehicles.
![Metal Fatigue Preview [ More bottleneck action @ 640 x 480 ] > View Full-Size in another window.](images/13-s.jpg) More bottleneck action
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![Metal Fatigue Preview [ No idea what these are @ 640 x 480 ] > View Full-Size in another window.](images/14-s.jpg) No idea what these are
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