Sand Land
SAND LAND’s another disappointing case of Licensed Anime: The Game
What year is it? Because this action RPG feels like a return to the bad old days of forgotten adver-games, the sort of thing that included a bit of everything. At times it’ll force a platforming section on me, complete with bottomless pits to avoid. Or I’ll have to hit buttons at the right time like QTE-ruined cutscenes never went out of fashion, or grit my teeth through multiple stealth sections. Multiple stealth sections.
Which is a pity because when I’m not gaming like it’s 1999 there’s a definite charm to the game’s imaginative selection of vehicles, encompassing everything from bulbous tanks to gigantic battleships.
Bashed-up trucks might have a balancing pair of back legs that only set down when the vehicle comes to a stop. Tanks rear up slightly whenever they gain a sudden burst of speed, and lighter vehicles bounce around as they navigate uneven terrain. I can almost feel how hefty these machines are just by looking at them.
Anything I can drive can be built and then customised in a garage, creating new weapons, new engines, or even attaching specialist extra functions. Once that’s sorted these machines as a whole, as well as their individual parts, can then be upgraded further, or have new parts swapped in as required.
So it’s a shame this core part of the game is about as much fun as taking a car to a real mechanic. Each new vehicle requires an increasingly long list of materials to create, and at times the plot will grind to a halt until I build one very specific machine. Item descriptions like “can be obtained from a variety of vehicles” are frustratingly unhelpful when I need just to build a bike that’ll help me speed across a desert’s worth of quicksand. I had little choice but to wander off and hope for the best.
At least it doesn’t take any time at all to hop around the map, thanks to the game’s generous fast travel system. Any major town or health-restoring water station I’ve already visited automatically becomes a free teleportation point, so the chances are when someone says, “Maybe we should go to…” it’ll only take a few clicks.
Anything I can drive can be built and then customised in a garage
NEED TO KNOW
