skyth's Full Review: Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes for Dr...
Urbanfetch.com had a new game in its store. It listed it with some description that resembled a strategy, based on giant bots. My hands were already itching with temptation. I sure was anxious to check out a strategy game for the Dreamcast. Upon starting the first mission, I realized this was not a strategy game at all. In fact, its a mech game in all of its traditional sense, which is not really bad. PSX offers a few games of great caliber in this genre; PC has its brilliant Mech Warrior Series. I sure didn't mind seeing an adaptation on the Dreamcast, but I would soon be disappointed by the poor execution that went into the style of this game.
Story Line 8/10
The beginning sequence is supposed fill you in on the story line of Gundam. There is some sort of a war going on, with Xeon (not sure of the spelling) forces wanting to take over the world. The earth's resistance forces have been in utter defeat until recently, when different groups of mech warriors completed successful strikes against enemy forces and started to change the face of the conflict. During the game play, the story line is revealed through a camera which works sort of like a telephone. Also, during the missions, there is a lot of talk between you and your sergeants. The story line of Gundam is quite classic in terms of futuristic catasthropies go, but things do change a lot and there is enough plot twists to keep you entertained. The voice acting also offers promising performance, sometimes throwing in a few no-braino jokes that will at least make you smile.
Graphics 6/10
The mechs (or mobile suits as they are called in this game) look simply gorgeous, with their rocket launchers or machine guns on the right hand, and a shield on the left. The heads usually have a beam of light where the cockpit is supposed to be, and the jets that allow these behemoths to jump 100 feet into the air make things look simply superb. Unfortunately, one can't say the same about pretty much everything else in the game. The ground texture looks like it came out of the PSX, the sky is always foggy and there really isn't anything spectacular to look at other than the mechs. On another standpoint, the communicator mentioned earlier outputs the ugliest human faces you will see in any game. But, the explosions and gun fire do look sweet, not unlike the light sabers that these mechs seem to wield like Jedi's.
Game Play 1/10
The controls are the most problematic issue in terms of game play. The directional pad is used for moving and walking in different directions, with no button for strafing or sliding other than a double tap on the directional buttons which depletes your jet pack. The analog controller is used for the turret. With your thumb being the only way you can use both the analog and the d-pad, your mech must come to a full stop for you to move your turret. There seems to be no way of setting a certain speed and than paying attention to your turret only. Unless you get a lock dead-on, more often that not you will end up like a sitting duck while trying to target your enemy. It seems that in order to fix this problem, they have added an auto turret movement schema. Your head will always try to turn towards your targeted enemy, which makes your job a whole lot easier. Just press in any direction after you get a lock, and you end up strafing, flying and doing whatever else you wish to do while keeping your enemy in sight. Why won't the computer shoot for you as well? That way you won't have to play at all, and just watch the action from a 3rd point of view. Gundam has the worst control scheme I have seen in any game.
The game offers mech customization, but the amount of stuff you can change is so low that you shouldn't even bother. Instead of using a machine gun, you can get a rocket launcer. Or, you can get a small or a large shield. You get some nifty weapons later on, but the customization is really not worth the effort. There isn't enough options to customize anything...its more like picking up your primary weapon and jumping into the battle.
Commanding your 2 follower bots is pretty good, but I never quite found out what Oasis does other than give you reports on stuff that you can already see on your map. The manual is so poorly written that, after playing the game for 10 minutes, I realized figuring stuff out on my own was a better way to go. Your mechs have the AI of a turtle from Super Mario 64. Tell them to attack someone, and they will end up mauling your butt into pieces if you get close to the action. Ask them to guard you, and they will go as far away from you as possible. The enemy AI is no different from this, as from time to time they will try walking into walls like a fly that is bashing its head into the window over and over again while you whack them from behind. At least the AI in Super Mario Bros. had a pattern they followed. These guys run around and shoot things randomly, bashing themselves into walls. I was cracking up for the first few minutes, but than it got boring when I realized it wasn't done for the humor effect.
Conlusion 2/10
This game could have been so much more, but it looks like the developers got lazy about the most important things. The control scheme is just terrible, add that the dumbest AI imaginable and you've got an utter failure. Gundam is unfortunately that failure, lets all hope they release a game like this one but fix up these unforgivable mistakes.
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