Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 (Playstation 2)

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 is the second Gundam-themed crowd-brawling game on the Playstation 2, from the company that made the genre popular – KOEI. It’s basically Dynasty Warriors with the historical theme replaced by a mish-mash of all the Gundam licenses at that point – from the original Mobile Suit Gundam all the way to SEED, with each franchise lending two to four suits from its roster.

Visually, the game looks decent for a Playstation 2 game but pales in comparison to other Gundam games on the system (particularly Mobile Suit Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam,) as the suits look particularly tiny and the sparse environments do a poor job of providing a sense of scale. Additionally, many of the textures look muddy and the variety in environment design leave a lot to be desired.

Gameplay and combat is exactly what you’d expect from a Dynasty Warriors game – you pick a pilot, a mobile suit (you can mix and match, btw), and run around a map killing random enemy mobile suits along with the occasional boss suit. There’s a lot of stuff added to give the gameplay more depth - like the ability to boost dash and block, the ability to launch different types of attacks depending on button combinations and sequences, the gundam’s equivalent of a musou super attack, and for some suits – a transformation. However, the sum is less than its parts as they all result in combat that is clunky and imprecise.

The main trouble has to be with targeting. Pressing one of the shoulder buttons allows you to keep the camera steady so that it doesn’t rotate all over the place while you’re running around and wading through hundreds of enemies, but there’s no way to lock-on to a target. When you’re blasting and slashing your way through a ton of enemies, it shouldn’t be a problem, but when you’re trying to hit a specific mobile suit (particularly a boss), you’ll find yourself hitting thin air a lot of times as your enemy is thrown away from the path of your attack. The auto-combo feature further compounds this problem.

SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors: Shin Mirisha Taisen

SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors: Shin Mirisha Taisen is an RPG action game for the Nintendo DS, which is based on the TV anime series BB Senshi Sangokuden: Brave Battle Warriors. As the SD prefix impies, the game depicts the Gundams in super deformed/comical style. Also, they’re living creatures instead of bipedal combat vehicles.

The closest comparison for SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors: Shin Mirisha Taisen (a mouthful, innit?) is Tecmo Koei’s Warriors Orochi series series. Imagine if it was ported properly to the DS (gameplay is retained but graphics have been downgraded to accommodate the hardware) and given an SD Gundam theme.

The game follows the story of the TV anime and comes with over 40 playable characters, giving you the option to play 3 characters that you will switch between on every stage. As implied above, combat is similar to Tecmo Koei’s Warriors series, where you have a light and heavy attack, a jump, and a super (musou, brah.) attack that can be launched when a certain bar is filled.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact (PSP)

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact is a 3rd person crowd-brawling game for the PSP, following Kizuna Drive and Akatsuki Rising. The main difference between Ultimate Ninja Impact and its predecessors, besides tweaks under the hood and roster updates, is the use of cel-shading in order to provide anime-like visuals.

For the uninitiated, 3rd person crowd-brawling games give you a character, an expansive stage to run around in, and waves upon waves of enemies that you have to wipe out. Sometimes you also get a boss fight at the end. If you’ve ever played any of Tecmo Koei’s –Warriors series of games, then you know what crowd brawler game is like. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact is basically like that – Dynasty Warriors with Naruto Shippuden themes.

The bad things first, because they’re few and far in between: the game is lengthy and takes you from the rescue Gaara arc all the way to the Ninja summit, but once you’ve finished the story mode, the extra missions won’t be that appealing.

There is a tendency for the combat itself to be repetitive, but this is more a flaw of the genre than the game. I mean, crowd brawlers by design will have you fighting tons of cannon fodder over and over again; complaining about it is like complaining that water is too wet. Lastly, the extra modes, as mentioned, isn’t that different from the story mode so there’s very little incentive to take them on once you’ve had your fill of the main game. It would have been better if they included a 1 on 1 vs mode against the CPU.

Now we get to the good parts: