Robots go head-to-head in battle with lots of customizing options

Up to four robos can battle in various modes.
SACRAMENTO BEE
To steal a line from "The Simpsons": In the future most of the fighting will be done by small robots. And in "Custom Robo," you will build and maintain these robots.
The game takes place in a world where people no longer fight directly. Instead, they project small mind-controlled robots into a "Holosseum," a virtual arena, where the little machines duke it out for the sake of their masters.
The game's main event is the story mode, where players take on the role of a young hero and work him up through the ranks of his city's Custom Robo Commanders, and uncover the mystery of his father's disappearance.
The starting point is the bottom of the heap, and this young protagonist must at first slog around doing odd jobs for a low-rent mercenary company called the Steel Hearts. But forget the story. It's superfluous, and serves mostly as an excuse for the real point of the game: to battle other Commanders and unlock scads of items and new robots to upgrade.
Custom Robos
There are several classes of Custom Robos, from well-rounded models to slow and clunky bruisers to types that specialize in fast air movement or quick and stealthy dashes. Each can be outfitted with a gun, a bomb launcher, a shoulder-mounted pod launcher and a leg attachment, with dozens of variants of each type of part.
Simply put, that's a lot of customization.
Progress in the story mode unlocks new parts and robos for use (thankfully, they can be obtained for free once unlocked). Once a player has picked a fight (or had a fight picked), combat begins, in the form of a ball of energy displaying an image of the Holosseum. There are a number of these arenas, each with a different layout and set of obstacles; some are dangerous, others are destructible.
Once the robos enter the fray, the game becomes a fairly fast-paced, arcade-style blast-'em-up. Each robot can jump, dash in midair, charge on the ground, fire its gun, launch bombs and send out explosive pods. The controls are simple, and the action is generally frantic -- sometimes a little too frantic. The game play is decent fun, but the control is imprecise.
Up to four robos can battle it out in 1-on-1, 2-on-2, 3-on-1, battle-royal or tag-team modes, depending on the circumstances.
Once the regular story mode has been finished, a new Grand Battle mode opens up, where players can unlock even more items and earn ranking against the game's computer opponents.
"Custom Robo" also offers a few multiplayer modes; up to four players can vie for supremacy with their own customized battle machines in any of the match types listed above.
The game's graphics are a mixed bag. While the robots and their mix-and-match parts are all well-detailed, the camera angle during battles floats strangely above and far away from the action, so that detail can't really be appreciated except during victory poses or the actual customization process. The weapon effects are OK, but nothing special, and the arenas all have a hackneyed cyberspace look to them.
X"Custom Robo," for GameCube, is rated T.