There's nothing that makes you feel dumber than giving some company another chance when should you know far better. You plunk down hard earned cash for a game that looks promising, despite everything you'd been through before, and you end up kicking yourself for it as soon as you pop in the disc. In this particular case, the company is Bandai, and the disc is Mobile Suit Gundam Seed...a big pink Haro that disguises the evil just waiting for you once the disc is decoded.
You're probably asking why I'm trying out another Gundam game when so many other horribly, horribly bad ones with the Bandai name emblazoned on the front had failed so miserably before it. After all, you're probably thinking, "Doesn't he remember Gundam 0079 for the Playstation?" Yeah...of course I remember that. That was the one where the first guy you kill looked like Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. It took me 45 minutes before I actually killed him.
But, given that they had a really solid title in Federation vs. Zeon (at least the Japanese version of it.) and that they were smart enough to let Capcom make that game instead of doing yet another horrible job, and since that game was actually well received for once...I figured maybe they pulled their collective heads out of their asses. Maybe they had realized, "Hey, you when we make games...they kind of, you know, SUCK." Maybe they would either just use the engine they had from before...or continue to outsource the games.
Nope.
Story
I don't care. I'm sick of the Gundam story at this point. I like it because it has big robots, and those robots have big light sabers. The Gundam series has become a essentially a huge Mad Libs at this point. Take your standard troubled youth. Station him on a big, slow-moving ship that has almost nothing in the way of weaponry and is constantly under attack. One of his enemies is a blonde guy with a mask. For some reason they have to fight. In the end, neither of them will die, and the real cause of the war will turn out to be some megalomaniac, and the world will realize how stupid they were, at least for 2 years. At the end of that span of time, everyone has once again built up a fantastic amout of weaponry, and is fighting mad once again...and the population has spontaneously regrown.
There you have it. Every Gundam series ever made...probably every Gundam series that ever WILL be made. But, bear with me for a little tangential anecdote here.
When I was in Japan last December, my friend Sean and I stumbled onto to the quarterly Comic Market. It was free to get in, so we popped inside. Huge, HUGE mass of people inside trying to buy comics that fans had drawn that were based off of other comics.
I didn't really browse that much, but I found some guy at the far back wall that had the best comic there. He had drawn a series called, "Gundam: Pointless War 0091". That pretty much sums up the story for this game. I probably would have bought it too, except that given the other doujinshi artists in the area, it was highly likely that there would have been a lot of...conduct inappropriate for a Gundam pilot. Let's just leave it at that.
If you really want to know the basics, your ship that looks like White Base is called Archangel, your Mobile Suit is called "Strike" at the beginning (You won't get the full Gundam suit until the last level of the game.) and you, the main character's name is "Kira".
Gameplay
Get all those thoughts of this being a 3rd person shooter like Federation vs. Zeon out of your head. This is a side scrolling shooter, and a very, very slow one at that. Kind of feels like what I'd imagine a turn-based shooter to be like. Your Gundam starts out being able to do 4 things, Jump, Shoot, Block, and switch targets.
As you shoot stuff you get points, and you can level your character temporarily. It gives him a HUGE boost in shot power for a couple seconds, and it restores some of his "Strike"s power. If you lose all of the little bars underneath your main health bar, you lose any powers you had from any external suits, and more depressingly, your Mobile Suit loses color. Now they won't be able to tell you apart from all the cannon fodder. Noooooooo!
The other thing powering up does is give you a huge boost in score. You get a x10 multiplier for all the stuff you kill in the next few shots, which, if done correctly, can go a long way towards getting you your next boost in power.
Every once in a while, you're run into enemy boss characters, who generally also have Mobile Suits. They're have a counter on them that lets you know how many hits you have to do before they start actually taking damage. It doesn't matter how hard you smack them, a hit is a hit is a hit until that counter is at 0.
Most of the time, the overly simple battles will just have you jumping and hitting the fire button while you shoot everything that is too stupid to stop you. This includes all fodder enemies, all the way down to the last boss.
Graphics
The graphics are excellent. If there was a story you cared about, and you didn't just skip the cutscenes, what you'd see are sections of the ship, and the character would have moments where they speak to you. It's very reminiscent of the way Sakura Taisen does its conversations, only you don't have any control over the conversation, and you don't even have to hit a button for it to progress. It just goes. So, I just skip it altogether.
I was very disappointed with the intro. They recruited T.M. Revolution to crank out the opening theme for the anime again, called "Invoke". However, the editor for the intro doesn't use the rapid beat section at all like they should...some quick cuts would be nice there, but instead you get to the really fast paced part of the song, at it shows a bunch of panning shots. Not the way to get the adrenaline pumping.
There are some nice segments of your suit getting prepped and armed, but you see the same thing every time you start a level, and you start skipping it after the 2 or 3rd time.
The actual mechs in combat are done well, too. But don't be fooled. It's the only thing they spent put any work into in the game. If you wanted to spend money on a bunch of flashy graphics, and no substance...you could just go finance the Bit Boys.
Sound
The best part of the game. There's voice acting through the entire game and it's all well done...however, when you do an anime, and you have the voice actors coming in to do work all the time, it's EXPECTED that the voices sound good. So you don't get too much credit for that.
My personal favorite part of the game is the sound, especially since they included little taunts and death cries for the random characters. It's really funny to kill a guy just as he finishes his taunt, to have it continue right on into his death cry. "I'm gonna kill you...Noooo, someone avenge my death!" Booom. The best part of this game hands down.
The T.M. Revolution song gets a pretty decent mark in my book, but the ending theme is so reminiscent of all the other Gundam ending songs to me, it only reinforces the cookie-cutter feel of the anime, and doesn't do anything for me at all.
Flaws
The entire game is too damn easy. I think it's more difficult to navigate through the DVD Menu of Gundam Seed than it is to play the video game. From beginning to end, while stopping to watch some of the cutscenes, and chatting with people...2 hours. That's IT. 120 minutes. For $50 plus international shipping. I think there are some 900 sex lines that are cheaper than $2/minute.
Granted, there IS a Vs. mode, but I honestly don't see why I'd want to drag a friend into this. Misery might love company, but I sure don't like bothering to be the one to subject them to it.
The game offers no resistance whatsoever. For the most part, the variations in your suits are stupid too. You have 4. The standard one...which is POINTLESS to use after the first level, where you don't have a choice. You have the Aile Striker, and Sword Striker, and the Striker Launcher.
The Aile Striker is just the regular suit with a bigger thrust pack. The Sword Striker has a cool sword, but a really, slow ranged weapon. The Striker Launcher has a powerful ranged weapon, but it takes a really, really long time to shoot the damn thing, and you don't have a close combat weapon.
The Striker Launcher becomes essentially useless, because it can't kill anything in 1 shot. You just get mauled waiting for it to reload. The Sword Striker is the same if you're on a level with enemies that stay off in the distance. So, you basically use the Aile Striker for every mission, and if you see that it's mostly land based close combat, you take the Sword Striker.
At the end when you get the Gundam it can *gasp in wonder* shoot the standard gun AND carry a sword. "What a country!", Yakov Smirnov would probably say...if his act didn't die in the 80s...
Even the Start Screen is lame. The prompt to "Push Start Button" comes up, and if you hit start...it takes a full 7 seconds to actually do anything. I thought my game had crashed the first time.
As I mentioned earlier, every enemy in the game falls for the same jump shoot, jump shoot, pattern. That only time the enemy gets dangerous is when it sends one of the common baddies underneath you, and it tries to attack you from behind as you're landing from a jump. Since it's waits so long to actually attack, it almost never works though. Let the walking for cakes commence!
Overall
This game sucks. It's short, it's easy...and most of all, it's all done by Bandai. This is a waste of time. Don't buy, don't rent. Certainly don't import...like I did. Please don't do that, that would make this review all for naught. This would beat Naruto GBA for my worst game this year, except I had higher expectations for that game, and Bandai's reputation precedes them. So, even though you feel retarded for buying the game, you realize it's on par with what you should hve been expecting. Still...don't even think about bothering to play this game...even with the Limited Edition Haro Super Balls.
