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| Maou 3070th Post
  
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|  "Re(1):The state of Giant Robots in gaming" , posted Fri 12 Feb 14:00:  
quote:
I then had a conversation with a coworker on "Why DID S-E stop making Front Mission games?".
I recall a pal of mine playing a LOT of Front Mission Alternative and maybe 2, but I distinctly remember 3 being a disappointment for him...I think the system was bad. Can't have helped the series.
I remember a different pal playing a LOT of Super Robot Taisen in the late 1990's, and like Front Mission, the contrast between then and now may owe to the level of energy around giant robots in general. Having multiple high-profile Gundam series, Evangelion, and god knows what else in the 1990's probably also influenced the state of giant robots in a positive way. The only truly major giant robot game I'm aware of now is Xenoblade, and that's a holdover from Square having made a (really neat) Evangelion clone in, again, the 1990's.
I've mentioned it before, but one impressive showing that caught my eye is Astebreed. I'd like to play it. Sure, it's a shooter where the ship happens to be a giant robot, but still.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 12 Feb 14:03] |
| Spoon 3234th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):The state of Giant Robots in gaming" , posted Sun 14 Feb 12:43
quote:
I then had a conversation with a coworker on "Why DID S-E stop making Front Mission games?".
I recall a pal of mine playing a LOT of Front Mission Alternative and maybe 2, but I distinctly remember 3 being a disappointment for him...I think the system was bad. Can't have helped the series.
Ironically, FM3 is considered the seminal Front Mission game in the West, because it was the first one to be localized. It certainly wasn't a BAD game, though it wasn't as experimental gameplay-wise as FM Alternative. It was however very ambitious in the scope of its gameplay content, what with its two scenarios, its faux-internet, the large number of cutscenes and pseudo-overworld, etc.
Indeed, FM4 had a rather chilly reception in the West in spite of its generally superior gameplay mechanics and impressive-if-very-grey graphics because of how much narrower the scope of the game was. FM3 is a game where you could eject pilots from their Wanzers and then steal their Wanzers after killing the pilot. FM4 is a game where these is no such thing as pilot ejection and it's all about union/chain attacks. FM4 had substantially superior voice acting than FM3, too!
FM5 was never released in the West, but gameplay-wise it is a direct successor to FM4. It's a bigger game than FM4, with new cool mechanics, conversations between missions, pilots to assign as well as mechs to customize, etc.
FM Evolved sank the franchise as far as I can tell. It was where Square contracted out Double Helix to make a 3rd person shooter, and the reception was poor everywhere. FM fans didn't get the strategic game they wanted, non-FM fans just found a clunky TPS at a time when the genre was entering its peak, what with Gears of War carrying the X360 in the West.
quote:
I've mentioned it before, but one impressive showing that caught my eye is Astebreed. I'd like to play it. Sure, it's a shooter where the ship happens to be a giant robot, but still.
Astebreed is not a bad shooting game at all, a little on the easy side if you are not a hardcore score-attacker, but the feeling of being a giant robot is not there at all in the game. Like, if somebody told me that in the whole game I was just a human-sized robot suit, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference in the overall gameplay experience.
The most Super Robot (i.e. powered by hot blood and burning passion and sense of justice etc.) game I have recently played is The Wonderful 101. In spite of there being plenty of gameplay parts where you are supposedly a giant giant robot that play just like when you are a normal-sized person, the game does a lot to remind you about "hey remember when this was HUGE and you were TINY and now you're in the thing that's HUGE but you're STILL TINY!", which is critically different between it and Astebreed.
The younger-than-3-years-old game featuring giant robots I have recently played is EDF 4.1, which simultaneously features some of the most and least satisfying giant robot punching I have ever gotten to experience.
I'm frankly surprised/disappointed that there aren't more giant robots in mobile games. Giant robots have been popular for pretty much forever, lend themselves to a huge number of different genres (real-time and otherwise) and levels of production value, allows for all kinds of animation and content conveniences in either 2D or 3D, etc. etc. etc.
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