PS3 - Mobile Suit Gundam Senki U.C.0081 - Initial Thoughts

PS3's Mobile Suit Gundam Senki U.C. 0081 has been released for a day now. Although I am still a long way from playing enough to compose a genuine no bias review for this game. I thought it would be beneficial to people what has yet to purchase this expensive game to decide whether to buy or not. So here I will provide my initial thoughts on the game, follow later by a full review.

Most Gundam related games in the past are usually a hit & miss affair, plagued with more misses than hits. They all started out as good concepts, but most of the time failed miserably in execution. No one mention about Gundam Crossfire for the PS3 or Operation Troy for the Xbox360 anymore (evil grin). And the only worthy Gundam games was the original Gundam Senki for PS2 & Gundam Side Story: Rise from the Ashes, that one was a classic. And during the past few years, Bandai had been publishing more games that are of good quality, however, most of these games resided on the PSP console, with limted graphical abilities (Senjou no Kizuna, Gundam Battle Series, Gundam vs. Gundam, Giren no Ambitions..etc.). And the Wii console was graced with a pretty exciting MSG Sensen 0079 which is a blast to play on a big LCD screen. But we needed more, somethings that is equally fun in terms of gameplay as well pleasing graphic that would immerse us into the Gundam world. So is this wait over with PS3's Mobile Suit Gundam Senki U.C. 0081? Here is my initial thoughts on the game:

Presentation:
Game menus are mostly in japanese, but with enough english text to help foreigners navigate to where you need to go to enjoy this game. The game GUI (Graphical User Interface) are well done, is easy to tell the functionality of each menu screen. Actually the GUI is very (VERY) similiar to those found on Wii's MSG Sensen 0079. And because I played that game extensively, it took away all the 'Wow' effect, not that there were any 'Wow' moment to speak of. Overall, presentation is well done, and japanese novice won't get lost.

I was hoping for a big eye-popping opening intro for start of the Senario portion of the game. But I was greatly disappointed by how the intro was presented. It was not 100% anime... far from it; the intro was 50% moving comic book style storying telling (similiar to the PC game: Homeworld), mixed in 25% of character animation sequence that everyone had seen on the TV ads, and 25% cell shaded graphics when displaying the mobile suits sequence. But I was glad that subsequent anime sequence no longer display those terrible comic book style art, but that reminds unconfirmed until I play more.

Presentation thus far is functional.... The 1st senario intro was a bit of a disappointment, but subsequent anime sequence were pretty good.

Graphic:
The in-game graphic is surely a delight on the eyes, and definitely helps immerse player doing battles across the battlegrounds. While the graphic is not top notch when it compares to other top quality PS3 games, but good enough to be worthy for the PS3. In-game graphic suffers from very minor slow down when there are lots of stuff going on, and also minor clipping here and there. But none of it caused any major distraction, say compare to Gundam Crossfire.

Mobile Suits are very well done & detailed. They move pretty smoothly, and not jagged like Crossfire. When 6+ MSs doing battle on the screen is very exciting.

Explosions & Cannon Fire are all pretty well done. My only nags when MS are destroy, they all seem to be destroyed the same way...first they kneel then explodes. A bit more variety here would really help.

I would probably have more comments on the graphics as I playthru the game.

Gameplay:
I hate to say this, I usually has a saying, "Play one Gundam game, you played them all". Although there are a some new game functions, but basic gameplay is like any other 'Behind the back MS gameplay'. Eventhough I am having a blast playing the first few missions, but I expect the excitment will die down very quickly, because everything is just so similiar been there done that.

The controls are tight and responsive, squad command is quick and effective.

Squad AI are sometimes effective, and some time just down right dumb. They response to command and act appropriately. But sometimes you will see them shooting the ground & rock, because of line of sight issue. Enemy AI is pretty dumb on Easy & Normal setting. They pretty much just aimlessly run and shoot, there is 0 intellegence to them. While on Hard mode is a bit more challenging but still not quite the hard mode I was expecting.

Hopefully in later missions, a few surprises & gameplay variety will provide some needed punch. I do admit that playing the game with a vibrating game pad is rather fun.

Another thing I noticed was the long game load time. Is not that bad, but there will be a bit of waiting between missions & anime sequences.

Sound:
The game has a rather nice soundtrack, it has an epic feel to it. Cannon fire & explosion sounds nice but nothing too surprising here.

Anime sequence sound is top notch, character speaks just as you would expect from anime standards and definitely adds the excitment before playing a mission.

Multiplayer:
[Edited]
I was finally able to access a mulitplayer game. Load time is quite long though. I played a 4 player co-ops mission. Is pretty fun and fast paced action.

Tried 4 vs. 4... it is mayhem! Wow....just wow. Very fun indeed.

Graphic suffers from a little of of lag as expected on multiplayer games on the PS3. But otherwise the game runs very well.

More in my final review.

Replay Value:
Will conclude in my final review.

Final Thoughts:
Will conclude in my final review.


Some Screenshots of the game:


Game Start Screen

My GM took a bazooka blast when I took this pic

Later, my final review will tell if this new game is a mission success or failed.