Gundam: Last War Chronicles

[Joseph Hewitt]

One of my students told me that there was a Gundam playstation game on sale at Lotte Mart for 9000 won. I went there tonight and picked it up.

Forget all the other talk about what GearHead needs... you know what it could really use? More crap to blow up. In the second ESDF mission you have to defend a spaceship against Zeon attack. The spaceship survived, but I got scolded by the commander just because a couple dozen buildings and a guntank got blown up in the meanwhile... Eunsuk kept shouting at me, "They're on your side! I think that was your building!"

Bah. Who needs infrastructure when you have a giant death robot?

One thing I like about the game so far is that it really gives a feel of how big a giant robot would be. Just walking around you'll break stuff. So, I think, that's what GearHead needs... huge amounts of incidental destruction.

[Phil Munoz]

I guess that means you'd get a worse reputation if you continually break stuff.  Paying for damages could lessen the effect.  Criminal characters shouldn't mind at all.

[Joseph Hewitt]

That's what I was thinking- lowered reputation plus docked pay. If enough stuff breaks a defense mission will presumably count as a failure.

...

I played the game again after posting. I was somewhat distracted by my wife humming the "Katamari" theme song while I ran around. You can't roll a Rick Dom up into a ball.

[Phil Munoz]

katamari... good ost, really.

[SharkD]

I kind of thought this is what you meant when you said there would be city battles in GH2.

[Joseph Hewitt]

That was the plan. The map generator is in place but the damage-recording code hasn't been added yet. Buildings, though, are kind of hard to destroy- I need more stuff, like shipping containers, water towers, refineries that can explode...

[Epsilon]

Enviromental damage would be awesome. And you'd have to watch your step.

"Chimentero walks on the Generator Pylon! The pylon explodes! Chimentero takes 1247 damage!"

[Joseph Hewitt]

One problem with the game is that as you complete missions, you unlock new mecha to use. Zeon has loads of different mobile suits. Depending on the mission you can take some long-range units like the Dom and Gelgoog, or some close combat units like the Gouf and Z'Gok.

The EFSF, on the other hand, has just a few units. Most of them are GM variants. They have no good ranged units... there is the GunTank, but just as in the cartoon there are only two types of this mecha: those that have been blown up already and those that haven't been blown up yet. Admittedly last night I did unlock the GM Sniper, and that is pretty decent, but it doesn't have the armor or the maneuverability of the Dom Tropen from Zeon.

Of course I do like the Zeon mecha better than I like the EFSF mecha, so I probably shouldn't complain that I've been finding them easier to use, but still... The variety gap between the two sides can be explained by Gundam's history as a mecha-of-the-week show. Every episode there'd be a new Zeon threat for Amuro to take out... but every week he'd be piloting the same old machine.

One last note. Piloting a GM Sniper and rushing into close combat against a Hygogg because your beam cannon is out of energy is not a happy fun moment.

[draconuszero]

Quoting: Epsilon

Enviromental damage would be awesome. And you'd have to watch your step.

One would also worry about using blast weapons while in the radius as well as around buildings that go boom while in said radius...

Will you be getting warnings about environmental damage in-combat, after the mission or both?

[Joseph Hewitt]

I'm thinking, in the spirit of roguelike games, no warnings should be given until after the mission. Some players will complain, of course, but it's a defense mission- they should have known they weren't supposed to go blowing everything up.

[Anticheese]

Agreed, players should think before they blow things up.

What kind of blowupables were you thinking of adding?

[Joseph Hewitt]

All kinds of things- different buildings, shipping containers, fuel depots, buses full of refugees fleeing the battle...

The Gundam PS2 game story continues. Today, Sung-min (the boy who told me the game was on sale. Also the "what is sex?" boy from the school bus story) told me that on Saturday his mother bought the Gundam game for him... and he's already farther along in it than I am!!!

Or at least he was until I got home from school and completed two more levels.

[dPB]

Are you talking about Federation vs Zeon? Took me ages to find that game and it doesn't help that I'm in Australia (Stupid PAL)

Edit: Whoops double post...bah,

[Joseph Hewitt]

I don't know what it's proper English name is (I have the Korean version), but "Gundam: Lost War Chronicle" is written in English on the box. The game is set in UC79 (although you can unlock some mecha designs that shouldn't have existed then, like the GP-01 Gundam). You can play as either Federation or Zeon through a series of 10 regular missions plus 4 bonus missions. There are 33 different mecha in the game- roughly 14 EFSF ones and 19 Zeon ones. All of the missions take place on Earth.

If that sounds like Federation vs Zeon, then it's probably the same game.

[dPB]

no I meant the PS2 one? Unless I'm confusing myself in believing that Lost War Chronicle is a PSX game? in Fed vs Zeon the Campaign takes place during the One Year War and basically you're given different missions and in total there's like 100 over missions