S.L.A.I. - Steel Lancer Arena International features some very stylized graphics in the menus that remind me of either “TRON” (the movie) or Rez; basically, vector graphic in appearance, but with very vibrant colors. The interface is essentially Hollywood’s vision of the internet (at least circa the 80's, when we were watching Max Headroom and “Hackers”). You can either travel from node to node inside of a specific location (city/server) or you can use the quick access menu to select your location and you will navigate there automatically. Each of these servers are environments modeled loosely based on their geographic locations.

The menu system in Story mode has a nice presentation, and while it does seem to be an 80's Hollywood dream of what the internet is, it’s nicely implemented. The intro even simulates lag and other technical difficulties to present a more “realistic” internet experience. Some of this presentation is somewhat comical, but it comes off as more of a tongue-in-cheek laugh at ourselves (for those of us who were around in the 80's, anyway).

The mechs themselves have a Ghost in the Shell-esque anime feel to them and can be highly modified by using your favorite mixture of parts. You can purchase a new mech or buy an old one and use the parts you like best to build your own creation. The strange thing about the arena battles is that the graphical style is not in keeping with the menu system. This makes for a little bit of confusion as the menu system goes so far to create a consistent feeling environment and then the arena battles have a much more realistic appearance, making it hard to return to the lower resolution of the menu system. I wish this had more explanation, as it feels like these two elements were developed independently of each other. However, once you simply accept this difference between the graphical styles, the game is enjoyable. Both graphical treatments are nicely done; they simply aren’t treated the same way.

The music selection is quite interesting. S.L.A.I. has some music while you play that is upbeat and a nice tempo for fighting to, but also gives you a large number of songs that you can “buy” with credits won during your fights (pssst! Watch for credit targets in the arena and shoot these for additional bonus credits!). A lot of the songs are apparently Asian artists, but I was surprised to see several Zebrahead songs in there as well (one of Psibabe’s favorite bands).

The sound effects are well done, with a nice variety of explosions and gunfire and all of the other sound effects seeming to fit in place. I do wish there had been some voice work, however, as all of the dialogue (which surprisingly is quite a bit) takes place in the form of text chatting on screen.

S.L.A.I. serves up a hot mixture of Arcade-style mech action, arena fighting, RPG elements, and a little bit of virtual pet gameplay just to spice things up. You can pause for a minute to take that in.

You get to build, maintain, customize, and pilot your mech in arena battles with controls that are simpler and more “arcade”-feeling than something from the Armored Core series. In the Story mode, you’ll find that the RPG elements are more predominant. You’ll be interacting with other characters both in and out of battles; some of these interactions are part of an over-arching storyline. You also interact with your “chip” – an animal-themed A.I. that assists you and serves as a companion. These chips have personalities and some of them actually learn (increase in their stats) with experience in the arenas.

In addition to the Story mode, you also can play head-to-head against a friend in Vs. mode or just jump into Quick Play mode to get some quick mech action before you have to take off somewhere. Mind you, you’re not going to complete the Quick Play mode in a rapid fashion – it is designed to be fairly long. You can, however, jump into it and get going pretty quickly by choosing an existing mech or selecting your mech from the Story mode. If you’re playing Quick Play for practice, you’ll want to select the same control scheme that you’re using in the Story mode. The real way that “Quick Play” is a quick mode is that there are only seven missions to beat. When you beat all seven missions, you can enter your name on the high scores section for Quick Play mode (well, if your score is high enough).

There is an Online mode that is supposed to allow you to play battles with up to four players. I found that this online mode never would actually work, however. You can, however, play head-to-head on a single PS2 in a split-screen mode, if you want to challenge your friends to a game.

The Quick mode in S.L.A.I. is somewhat like an endurance mode, and starts out harder than you do in the Story mode. Story mode eases you into concepts and lets you build your skills, your chip’s A.I., and your mech over time. If you’re looking for an easy way in, I suggest playing the Story mode until you feel like you need help to progress than either taking advantage of the “Battle School” located in the menu system or practicing in the Quick mode.

There are difficulty settings that allow you to choose how difficult you want the game to be and, in addition, there are different controller configurations, such as the one for beginners that is very simplified and the advanced configuration that lets you control everything to a much finer degree.

Another nice feature about the arena fights is that you can hit the exit when you want to leave. If you’re not doing so well and you’re starting to take damage, you can cut your losses and leave, rather than getting yourself completely blown up. It’s also pretty nice that you can select which entrance to use from a map that shows you the positions of opponents that are already in the game. This way, you can have a good idea of what to expect when you first step into the ring.

The mech building setup is nicely done, with more than a million possible mech configurations; not as deep as is found in the Armored Core series, but S.L.A.I. presents a less complex system for building and configuring your mech, so gamers can enjoy S.L.A.I. even if they’re not die-hard “tweakers.”

The multiple control schemes offered are nice, allowing you to have however much control over your mech as you desire. You don’t have to worry about the small details or use a complex control scheme if you don’t want to, and you can opt to have the more finely detailed control if you desire it; the best of both worlds, especially when you throw in the custom configuration that allows you to choose exactly how your controller setup should be configured. Sweet.

S.L.A.I. is supposed to feature an Online mode, but in the many attempts I made to actually connect and play online, I was never successful in actually playing the game online. In my opinion, this hurts the game quite a bit – it would be one thing if they hadn’t offered an Online mode at all, but to tout the feature on the back of the box and then not deliver on it is very aggravating. The online license agreement clearly indicates that the Online mode is provided “as-is” and “as-available,” which is basically the legalese equivalent of “no promises,” but the Online mode is still prominently displayed on the packaging. Bear in mind when considering this game that the Online mode may be completely non-functional; if this feature is a selling point for you, you should consider renting it first to verify whether it works for you.