It was on sale at GS for $45, and I traded in my old DS (recently got a Lite. Why didn't I trade my old DS in for the DS Lite? Well, I got rid of my old Xbox for the Lite, thats why), so after all was said and done, I got the game for just short of $14.00.
I'll just say it right out of the gate here, the singleplayer ****ing SUCKS. Yeah, there are apparently some parts you can only get through the SP... But that would require playing singleplayer. I just beat the second of the six campaigns, and I am very doubtful that I will ever pick up the SP game again. And, the real lame thing about the SP portion is, once you complete a campaign, you can't go back and replay a mission in it to try and get a better ranking, and possibly a better part or two. Now, how lame is that?
But, the online expierience.. Wow, just... wow. I wonder how many ideas they stole from mecahassault 2 and the ill-fated battletech MMO to make this? Because, it just reeks of those two ideas, but in a good way. I'm currently running around with the VG Cats crew (The Muppet Patrol!) on there, and its a frickin blast. The missions are tense, and require a lot more strategy than expected. And the customization... my God. You can make just about anything you want, given you have the correct parts. I, personally, like dicking around some times and making a ten-story mech with five generators, a cockpit, and a single pait of machine guns. It may not be able to do much, but man does it look funny. I've also seen some... inspired designs from various mech series. I've come across a few metal gears, a madcat, something that I think was supposed to be a Gundam, hell, even someone tried to make something akin to an AT-AT. Now, they don't look EXACTLY like what their trying to replicate, but with a little thought, you can figure out what their after.
If you've got LIVE, and can hook-up with a group of friends that have two brains, you'll have a good time. However, if all you wanna get it for is the SP, save your money.