Looking back to the days when the Mechwarrior series was in its prime, it’s not hard to see what the main appeal of the entire franchise was. Giant robots hold a special place in every gamer’s heart, so even the most obscure game will get some attention if it features these metallic beasts. Mobile Suit Gundam revolves entirely around huge humanoid machines, which is enough reason to give it a chance. Unfortunately, the robots are the only thing the game gets right.


When there are robots involved, a war is usually not far off. Mobile Suit doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, so a galactic conflict is pretty much required. As far as the game is concerned, that’s pretty much it in terms of the story. While nobody expects a deep and engaging storyline in a game like this, having a bit more backstory to work with would have been nice. Also, the campaign doesn’t really expand on the story at all, so all the missions feel like skirmishes instead of war operations that could tip the scales in one sides favor. As it is, the struggle between the Earth Federation Forces and the Principality of Zeon Army come off as just a boring series of confrontations.

On paper Gundam should be an excellent title, replacing the more arcade controls from the past attempts with a more realistic, Mechwarrior like approach. As it turns out, changing the genre a bit didn’t help much – the game is painfully boring and the combat is abysmal. Ignoring the fact that the game stutters almost constantly, killing enemies just isn’t fun. With a mix of ranged and close quarters combat one might think that the authors got at least one aspect right. Sadly both lack a good deal of additional work as they feel unfinished at best. Tapping the left shoulder button locks the targeting reticule on an enemy, which would be all right if that actually helped any. Owing to the enemies constant booster usage it is extremely hard to keep sight of a target and because of the painfully slow and cumbersome movement controls it takes a good while before you get another chance to strike at a foe. The camera doesn’t help either and it would require hours upon hours of playtime before one would get used to it (something no living man or woman should attempt to accomplish).


The funny thing is that because of the immense power of the melee weapons players won’t have to deal with most of those issues at all. Slashing the energetic sword/whip will take down most of the foes within seconds, so trying to fight the game and strafe around an enemy isn’t really required. The enemies do learn to avoid you later on, but even then it only takes a few seconds longer to deal with them, as regardless of their agility they tend to remain stationary every now and then.

There are a few things the game does well though. Between missions players can buy improved mech suits and upgrade their offensive and defensive stats. Shortly after starting the campaign players get access to an entire hangar of suits. Assigning pilots to these mechs is up to the player, as is repairing them between the skirmishes. Since the game progresses in turns it is sometimes possible that the player will run out of time, losing the chance to partake in assignments. This can in turn cause problems later on, when a lack of funds prevents the acquisition of better weapons and special mech suits. Because of that it is possible to come to a point where any kind of progress is impossible, requiring a restart of the campaign, along with better planning.


When speaking about missions, only one word can be used – bland. Regardless of how complex the mission objectives might be at any given point, every single mission plays out exactly the same. Killing everything in sight is usually all it takes to finish an assignment. The different locales the missions take place hardly help, especially because they are limited to only two climates – jungles and deserts. The environments do react to the explosions and mechs to a degree, but it’s mostly just a visual effect without any gameplay repercussions. Strangely enough, if the game was more lighthearted and didn’t take itself so seriously most of these issues could have been ignored. As it is, the game falls into the same category as the grandpa of all robot games Mechwarrior 2, which makes all of its flaws hard to ignore.

I’ve already mentioned the stuttery gameplay. Usually this can be attributed to good visuals, but this is not the case with Mobile Suit. Take a look at the screenshots and be the judge yourself – does this look like a game that should run at a sub-20 framerate? In case you forgot your glasses at home and can’t tell, the answer is no. When in the middle of nowhere with no enemies in sight the game manages to run decently, but as soon as anything other than flat terrain enters the viewport things take a turn for the worse. The strange thing is that the game looks like a PS2 title at best, with muddy textures and simplistic effects. The mechs look decent, but only when compared to the rest of the models. The interface doesn’t fare much better and it looks like the work of a twelve year old who just learned how to program in Java.

Conclusion

It’s been a while since a good mech game came out and Mobile Suit Gundam does little to help the situation. In fact, if I could turn back time I’d go back to my birth day and kill myself, just to prevent myself from ever coming into contact with this crappy piece of software. What pains me the most is that the game has some good ideas and the theme is just begging for a good simulation. Couple that with the PS3’s lack of games and you might be tempted to get this title. Don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!

Gameplay	3/10	Boring, tedious and hardly original. Think Mechwarrior 2 without all the fun.
Graphics	2/10	PS2 looks with a horrible framerate. What were they thinking?!
Sound	4/10	The music isn’t all bad and the voiceovers don’t suck. Quite possibly the highlight of the game.
Value	3/10	The two campaigns offer a decent amount of playtime, but no sane person would play through both of them.
Multiplayer	N/A	No online whatsoever isn’t as bad as it sounds – who would want to play this against their friends is beyond me.
Overall (not an average)	3/10	This is quite possibly the worst game available for the PS3 at the moment. Hopefully it will remain this way for the rest of the PS3’s lifespan.

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