Coming out as a PS3 launch title is Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire, the first next generation Gundam game. What can fans expect from the Gundam on the PS3? Not much. The storyline is set somewhere with in the period of the one year war, but it doesn’t follow any of the anime series. Instead Crossfire has players in an original “story” arc where they play your average grunt solider who can rise the ranks on either the Earth Federation or ZEON. Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire’s gameplay is what you would expect from a mech game, walking around in a giant robot and shooting things with a beam rifle. The power of the Playstation 3 allowed the designers to make the mobile suits move more like robots. So instead of fast paced controls the mobile suits are now going to move sluggishly on screen? Color me unimpressed, but there are enough mech games with rigid control schemes.
Sixaxis tilt control? Nope. Online play? Negative. Downloadable content? Maybe. 1080p? No, but it does have 720p. Does it at least look better? Yeah it does. Utilizing the PS3s GPU the Mobile Suits look shinier and environments are more interactive. The localization director mentioned that trees bend when you push through a forest and buildings crumble when you blast them with rockets. Since the PS3 has more RAM fallen mobile suits don’t disappear they stay on the ground for the remainder of the mission. One surprise is that Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire will include two language tracks, English and Japanese. The greater storage space is coming in handy for something and hopefully future PS3 releases will have multiple languages.
If you’re a huge Gundam fan you might enjoy Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire, but if you want something new wait until Mobile Ops: The One Year war comes out where you can play missions on foot and in mobile suits.
Published: Oct 25, 2006 11:35 am