Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet

For those unfamiliar with the light novel and anime franchise it is based on, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet may seem weird – First, while there is online multiplayer, the entirety of the game is single player-centric. Additionally, the “sword” in the title may seem like a misnomer because the game revolves around guns. But bear with us, it makes sense in the end.

For the uninitiated, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is a 3rd person shooter RPG based on the Gun Gale Online part of Reki Kawahara’s Sword Art Online light novel and anime franchise. Unlike previous Sword Art Online games, Fatal Bullet follows a user-created custom character inside a VR MMORPG game called Gun Gale Online. The user character’s story will intersect with those of the franchise’s main characters Kirito, Asuna, and the rest of their crew.

The Online part of the name pertains only to the faux VR MMORPG. The player gets to roleplay a person who plays the fictional VR MMO called Gun Gale Online. The in-game world’s population of player characters are only computer-controlled AI. The actual multiplayer is limited to a couple of modes where characters either try to duel each other or fight alongside each other against a Boss Monster, competing on who gets to do the most damage before the monster falls.

Story

It is not surprising that the story is decent, given that the game is based on a light novel. Obviously, people who dislike Sword Art Online will not like the game’s story as it is an almost direct adaptation, but SAO fans will definitely love the twists and the game, as far as we know, contains a plot thread that is exclusive to the game. So it is still worth experiencing even if you have already read the novel.

Graphics

Befitting of a 3D anime game, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet uses a 3D cel-shaded engine that aims to simulate the look of 2D cel-shaded anime. While it is still obviously a 3D game, the visuals do a great job by perfectly showing its characters as inspired by anime visuals, without looking out of place in the 3D environment. Some versions (particularly the PC port) also take advantage of post processing techniques to add more flourish to the visuals, most notably its use of chromatic aberration. This gives the game a slightly blurred but cinematic look.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Fatal Bullet can be a bit of a hit and miss. There is obvious potential in how the game handles. The characters handle perfectly depending on how you build them (as expected of an RPG, leveling up gives you points that can be invested into different attributes such as agility, dexterity, strength, etc – with each stat affecting different factors such as handling of the character, damage, inventory capacity, aiming efficiency, etc.)

The aiming is also forgiving. There is auto-aim that is functional but will not do as good of a job as manual aiming. This means beginners can rely on the auto-aim at first, until they get accustomed to manual aiming where they can do optimal damage.

The combat is not perfect, though. Some handling issues are present particularly when it comes to the use of two non-gun weapons: the UFC, which is a grappling hook that can be used to climb up places require some getting used to. And the photon swords will require practice to use effectively, because there is no lock-in targeting, you will have to struggle with the camera controls a bit in order to avoid hitting a lot of thin air. Fortunately, the photon swords provide some of the most consistently large damages in the game (bested only by the slow and heavy sniper rifles), and provide the ability to block bullets and lasers, which provides a tradeoff to its limited range and unwieldiness.

The game, we feel, could have also benefited from a cover system. Fortunately, your character is very mobile so the lack of a cover system does not hinder survivability, provided that you can adapt to its more fast-paced gunplay.

Replayability

Another glaring drawback to the game is its length. The campaign is extremely short, and can be finished in one sitting if not for some artificial lengthening tricks such as the need to grind affinity for each of the side characters in order to get the true ending, and the addition of a fourth wall-breaking time-rewind capability to the plot. People who love grinding may find this a plus, but people who just want to go through the story once should read a guide first, so that they can fulfill all the requirements for the true ending on their first playthrough, thus removing the need to rewind and re-grind.

All in all, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is by no means a perfect game. There is potential for the game to appeal to people who are not fans of the franchise, but it has glaring flaws that may be dealbreakers for people who are just looking for a good third person shooter. So if you are coming in and looking for an anime version of The Division, you should temper your expectations or else you’ll come out disappointed. Fans of the Sword Art Online franchise, on the other hand, will definitely enjoy this flawed, yet faithful adaptation of the Gun Gale Online arc.

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is a 3rd person action RPG set in the city of Akihabara and puts players in the shoes of a person who's been turned into a "synthizer," which is basically a vampire, and tasks you with hunting down others of your kind along with a CPU-controlled partner. The main gimmick of the game is that you defeat the so-called synthizers by beating them silly until they are weakened, and then exposing them to the sunlight by stripping items of their clothing.

Despite the seemingly mature premise of the game, kids and parents shouldn't worry because there is no actual nudity. The enemies that get stripped still have their underwear (and in cases that they don't, the naughty bits are conveniently hidden by lens flare) and there are no hyper-sexualized body types - the females have no exaggerated breast sizes or accented curves and in most cases the females and males have similar body shapes.


The biggest point of contention in Akiba's Trip will be the combat. If you're just starting out, you'll find the combat to be sluggish and clunky, but once you find the weapon that suits your playstyle and adjust to the proper timings, the combat system will open up and provide you with a workable - if not decent - gameplay (if you're used to conventional hack and slash games, you'll be at home with sword or glove-type weapons.)

The PC port of Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is available via Steam, and it's a pretty solid port job. The game is pretty well optimized and will run on hardware that doesn't even meet the minimum system requirements (although don't attempt to try and run it on onboard graphics.) There are no specific gamebreaking bugs or glitches outside of edge cases that are pretty much expected on the PC platform.

One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 (Wii)

If you just watch a demo of One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 on a shop or while a friend is playing it, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that it’s a really great One Piece game. After all, unlike its predecessors, it captures the look of the anime and manga (as opposed to the ones that use super deformed art style), and features an updated (at the time) roster with impressive-looking super attacks.

However, if you do manage to get a hand on a copy and start playing it, you’ll see that the game looks incomplete. And we’re not talking about missing some features or characeters – we’re talking about a game that probably wasn’t play tested by anyone who knows what a playable game should be.

First things first, the game is a 3rd person 3D fighting game that picks up exactly where the previous one left off. There’s a cutscene that will keep you up to date, and then you’re free to go and visit the desert island that serves as the main hub for the various boss fights interspersed by random encounter battles.

The desert island is one of the first annoying parts of the game – even if you have a map handy, navigation is confusing, tedious, and boring as there’s not a lot of variety in the featureless scenery. The second part is the random encounters. You’re going to fight random monsters, navy, and pirates that all feel the same save for minor variations in look.

The game could have been saved by the VS mode, as there’s a really playable fighting game in there somewhere that will let you stage visually-impressive fights between notable characters in the series (up to Ace’s death, at least.) Unfortunately, it’s hampered by the controls.

Like many games on the Wii, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 could have benefited from gamepad support, as it uses the wiimote and nunchuck in ways that mimic a dual shock control scheme, except for the tacked-on waggle controls. The unwieldy controls are exacerbated by the fights being too short even if you set the time limit to infinite. Just attack a couple of times, waggle, and the match is over. All that visual flair is useless if it’s over in a flash.

All in all, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 2 feels like a wasted opportunity to use the One Piece license on a brawler and/or fighting game. There’s a hint of a really enjoyable One Piece game in there somewhere, but somehow the devs weren’t able to execute everything well, resulting in an impressive-looking but underwhelming poor excuse for an action game. If you really need your One Piece action fix, I suggest skipping this one and going straight to the newer games released on the 3DS and PS3/4.

Brave Story New Traveler (PSP)

Brave Story New Traveler is easily one of the most beautiful games to come out for the Sony Playstation Portable, featuring gorgeous 3D visuals and a quirky art style that straddles the line between anime and those cute little hallmark figurines. But don’t let the visuals fool you into thinking that it’s a complex and ultra modern take on the fantasy RPG genre. The game is a throwback to the simple yet engrossing turn based RPGs that were so popular during the 16 bit and 32 bit era,

The story behind Brave Story New Traveler is not something that you haven’t encountered before: you are given control of a boy named Tatsuya, whose best friend Miki has mysteriously contracted an unknown illness. A voice asks Tatsuya if he wants to save his friend, and upon agreeing, our little hero is magically transported to a medieval fantasy land and tasked with gathering 5 different gems for the Traveler’s Sword.

If you’ve played old school 2D RPGs like the Final Fantasies or Chrono Trigger, Brave Story New Traveler will be familiar and would require no tutorial – you run around over a large map screen in order to get to various towns full of NPCs to talk to and dungeons and overworld areas full of random enemies to fight, which could be anything from spiky snails to walking trees that throw fruit at you.

The game starts out a little bit slow and leveling can be a little bit grindy especially considering that this is a handheld RPG, but if you manage to stick for a couple of hours or so of game time, the game – both the story and the mechanics – will start to open up and you’ll find an RPG that is fun to play in short bursts while you wait for enough time to complete the main quests.

Dragonball Z Supersonic Warriors

Dragonball Z: Supersonic Warriors gives you control of one of the many Z warriors or the series’ villains (from Vegeta to Buu) and lets you duke it out with another fighter on a wide open area. Unlike traditional fighting games where you can walk, dash, and jump, this game lets you float and dash in any direction. Mobility may be limited at first due to the floatyness of the controls, but you’ll be able to fight much better once you learn how to use the ki dash in order to speed up your moves.

When it comes to fighting, you have a light and heavy attack. The R button charges your ki, and pressing any of the attack buttons while charging will let you do either a heavy or light ki blast, depending on which attack button you pressed. Pressing both attack buttons while holding the R button will let you do a super, the type and direction of which will depend on where you are relative to the opponent.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu (Sega Gamegear)

Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu is a side-scrolling beat-em up game for the Sega Gamegear handheld, based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s classic shonen anime about spirit detective Yuusuke Urameshi and the colorful cast of demons, humans, and otherworldly beings that make up his list of friends and enemies.

Now, it’s all about context with retro games: it looks like crap now, but during the time when it was released, Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu was a good looking game that took advantage of the limited hardware that was available. Compared to other games released on the Sega Gamegear, Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu was colorful, well-animated, and had enough variety in the settings and enemies to keep you playing all the way to the end.

The mechanics for the game is simple. You choose one of the four main characters (either Yuusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, or Hiei) and have them travel from left to right of the screen, beating enemies along the way. Each of the characters have different attributes (speed, attack, etc.) rated from A to D, which affect how they handle. They also have unique mob-clearing special attacks, which come in the form of a cutscene.

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution (PC)

This covers the Steam release of CyberConnect2’s Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution instead of the console versions because of two very simple reasons: first is that I don’t have an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3, and second is because the PC port of the previous game in the series had so many technical problems that there may be a lot of readers wondering if the PC port is worth buying this time.

On that note, everyone should relax and be glad that CyberConnect 2 seems to have learned from their past mistakes. Unlike the poorly optimized Full Burst, Revolution works right out of the proverbial box. I’m still using the low-end PC (Pentium G2020, 4GB RAM, nVidia GT240) that had problems running Full Burst in full speed at the lowest resolution, yet Revolution ran like a champ at 1080p with a few dips in fps here and there (as I said, I’m running a PC that would be considered low-end 3 years ago so we shouldn’t be expecting miracles.)

Additionally, it seems like they’re no longer using frame-dependent timing because even at times when my PC struggled to maintain full frame rate (I got dips as low as 25 fps, according to FRAPS), the game didn’t feel slow-motion at all. Maybe they’re properly skipping frames this time around.

Unfortunately for the PC Master race, the frame rate is still capped at 30 fps. You’ll just have to grin and bear it as they’re probably keeping it uniform with the console versions in order to ease porting. Anyway, even at 30 fps the game still feels smoother than Full Burst, owing to a few tweaks in combat (which we’ll tackle later.)

As for a review of the game itself, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution is basically an upgraded version of Full Burst, and is probably using a modified version of its engine so there’s really no point in a standard review of the game. You can refer to the Full Burst review here if you want the basics. Instead, we’ll just outline some of the more noticeable changes (and whether they’re good or bad.)

Presentation

The first change that will hit you is the tweak to the presentation. It’s a minor tweak but helps a ton in making the user experience better – they simply sped up the time it takes for menu items to load. Most of you will remember that Full Burst’s menu required patience as it takes a few seconds too long before you can get it to do what you want. Moving from one section to the next is instantaneous now.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Battle Assault (Gameboy Advance)

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Battle Assault is a 2D fighting game that pits various Gundams and pilots against each other in 1 on 1 bouts. The game is technically a handheld installment of the Battle Assault series of games from the Playstation, with the main difference being that the available Gundams are limited to the ones found on the Gundam Seed franchise. Basically, it’s more of a spiritual successor to the Super Famicom’s Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, with a number of improvements.

For starters, there’s more play modes available: there’s a story mode, a VS. mode, an Arcade mode, a survival mode, a time trial mode, and even a practice mode. The combat is also faster and more novice-friendly due to the presence of an auto mode (where the input commands for specials and supers are simplified.) However, the biggest change is in the mechanics – first is that Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Battle Assault now allows you to customize your gundam before the start of a fight, allowing you to balance the distribution of energy in order to prioritize HP, thrusters, or PS armor. Speaking of PS armor, the second change is that the mobile suits now have breakable armors. If you sustain enough hits, the armor breaks and you are left weaker (not to mention less fun to look at.)

If you are a big fan of Gundam Seed and you liked Gundam Wing: Endless Duel on the Super Famicom, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Battle Assault should be right up your alley. It’s not as deep a fighter and the visuals aren’t that polished (it looks washed out and pixilated even on the Gameboy Advance’s small screen,) but it’s still a good handheld fighter and it occupies a specific genre niche on the GBA. Should be good for short bursts of mecha fighting action.

Shonen Jump’s One Piece (Gameboy Advance)

Shonen Jump’s One Piece is a sidescrolling beat ‘em up for the Gameboy Advance, based on Eiichiro Oda’s long-running pirate themed manga/anime series. The game is exclusive to the North American market, which is kind of odd considering that most anime-based games are released in Japan first and localized later (if at all.)

Shonen Jump’s One Piece is basically One Piece’s answer to Dragon Ball’s Advanced Adventure. Both games are from Dimps Corporation and it shows in the amount of work that went into the games. Shonen Jump’s One Piece didn’t have as much content nor depth as Advanced Adventure, but you can see the same amount of polish in both visuals and gameplay.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho Gaiden (Sega Megadrive)

I pity the individual who mistakenly bought this game when they are actually looking for Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters. Unlike the fighting game that is Sunset Fighters, Yuu Yuu Hakusho Gaiden is an RPG with active time combat, and unlike Sunset Fighters, it isn’t worth the cartridge that it’s on.

Assuming that you can understand Japanese (and if you don’t, you can stop reading now because you won’t really get much out of this game) enough to wade through the dialogue, and finally get to choose characters (you can choose between all four main characters) you’ll be met with a battle screen that puts you in third person/behind the shoulders view against random demons. You have your HP and RP stats, but the battle is in real time: you can move from left to right to dodge enemy attacks, block, or launch an attack of your own. The enemy can do the same, by the way.

MS Saga: A New Dawn (Playstation 2)

MS Saga: A New Dawn is a 3D turn-based RPG that uses elements from the early Universal Century Gundam, Gundam Wing, and G Gundam series. It puts you in control of a young orphan boy named Tristan and his best friend Fritz, who are on a quest to find a mysterious group of Mobile Suits that laid siege on their orphanage and killed all of its inhabitants (including their matron.)

The game is your standard JRPG fare, with combat being completely turn based as your group of Gundam and enemies take turns launching various attacks at each other. If you’ve played any Final Fantasy game older than XI, you know what this is all about. The main draw of MS Saga: A New Dawn is the ability to mix and match different pilots with different mobile suits, while modifying and upgrading said suits outside of battle, including swapping parts (which changes not only their stats but their appearance.)

Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2 (Gameboy Advance)

Back in 2002, Webfoot Technologies released Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku on the Gameboy Advance. It was an attempt to marry the Dragon Ball Z license with the action RPG genre. Unfortunately, the dialogue was awkward and the combat was clunky and unsatisfying. The game ended up being a disappointment for fans of the Dragon Ball franchise and fans of the action RPG genre.

Rather than give up, Webfoot technologies tried again after a year by releasing a sequel, Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2 , and it’s a good thing they did because not only is it a significant improvement over Legacy of Goku, it also stands as one of the better examples of the action RPG genre on the Gameboy Advance.

Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2’s story picks up where the first one left off: at the start of the Cell Saga, putting you in control of a pre-teen Mirai Trunks as he watches his timeline’s Gohan die at the hands of the Androids. Then you gain control of young Gohan in the present timeline for the obligatory tutorial. Thankfully, the tutorial is short and you soon find yourself thrust into the story proper – with Cyborg Frieza and King Cold’s arrival and their defeat at the hands of a now adult Mirai Trunks. From thereon, you play through the game while being given control of various characters, all the way to the Cell Games story arc.

Ragnarok Tactics (PSP)

Ragnarok Tactics is a spin-off game from the popular South Korean MMORPG franchise, Ragnarok Online. As the name implies, Ragnarok Tactics is no longer a point-and-click online RPG but a tactical role playing game with a heavier emphasis on story (which is told through dialogue between static character portraits and the occasional animated cutscene.) Visually, Ragnarok Tactics looks more polished than the original MMO while retaining the original’s chibi anime art style. Think of it as a much-needed visual upgrade on Ragnarok Online.

The game plays very much like any Japanese tactical RPG (FF Tactics, Jeanne D’ Arc, etc) but retains elements from Ragnarok Online, including the job/class system, the moves and even the sitting/resting mechanic, which allows characters to replenish health while sitting.

Ragnarok Tactics looks and feels like a really good translation of the original MMO in your first few minutes of play. However, the novelty starts to wear off after an hour or so as you realize that the pacing of the fights is way too slow even when compared to other tactical RPGs. I mean, I love Tactics games and was obsessed with Ragnarok Online in its heyday, but Ragnarok Tactics tested my patience to its limits. I wouldn’t be surprised if people find it difficult to maintain interest past the first fight if they aren’t fans of the genre or the franchise. If you want a really good Tactical RPG, there are a ton of better games on the PSP, and if you just want a portable Ragnarok Online spin-off game, you’re much better off with Ragnarok DS on the Nintendo DS.

Initial D: Street Stage (PSP)

The Initial D series of driving games is very popular in Japan but is only a bit of a cult hit in the west (probably because most installments in the series are Japanese-exclusive and not as accessible as the average racing game. Initial D: Street Stage is no exception.

Instead of multiple cars racing on the same track, Street Stage is a series of one-on-one races between the player and a rival. This game will throw newcomers for a loop at first because it looks and feels deceptively easy: the first few tracks aren’t full of tight turns, the cars handle extremely well and the game doesn’t slow you down much when you hit the rails/edges.

But make no mistake about it: this game will punish mistakes. Slow down for a millisecond or fail to turn at the right angle and you’ll immediately see your rival shoot past and take the lead. You’re also racing against time here. If you fail to hit the checkpoint before the timer hits 0, it’s game over. You’re going to lose a lot in this game (particularly on the first few tries), but if you manage to get past the steep learning curve, you’re going to find Initial D: Street Stage a very rewarding and addicting driving game.

Go Games’ Bleach Online (PC, Browser-Based)

I’ve been seeing Bleach Online pop up in a lot of places these days (including my own site’s ads). Receiving a personal invite from a friend claiming that it’s “similar to Marvel Avengers Alliance, but with Bleach characters” was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, as I have spent quite a bit of time mucking around with MAA. Bleach Online seems like something that I’d enjoy even if I don’t have enough free time to delve deep into what the game has to offer. I also figured I could post an entry about it given the theme of my site, maybe even help people who want to try the game but aren’t sure if it’s a real game or just a scam. If you're one of these people - it's not a scam. It's a real Bleach game that can be played on your browser.

First Things First: Legal Issues

Now, anybody who’s familiar with Bleach and the handful of anime games online knows that the characters, names, symbols and any other copyrighted IP in the games are being used without permission from the owners. Bleach Online is no different, and this one is particularly noticeable because it uses assets (namely from the audio) from other Bleach games – which is something that a big name developer will not give away freely (and something that is unnecessary for a legitimate online game developer because it’s easy to produce on their own.)

Basically, if you’re going to play this game, don’t expect too much and don’t get attached to your progress as it could disappear anytime, especially since Japan has started bolstering their online campaign against copyright infringement for manga and anime-related properties earlier this month.

Now, let’s get on with discussing the game itself.

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.

Mobile Suit Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam (GC/PS2)

There’s a port of Mobile Suit Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam for the Playstation 2 and the Gamecube, with the Playstation 2 receiving both an English and Japanese version. This review will apply to both since there’s very little difference between them outside of what the hardware entails (e.g. the GC version naturally has better loading times.)

Now for the skinny: Mobile Suit Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam is a third person action game based on Yoshiyuki Tomino’s iconic mecha franchise. The game puts you in control of a mobile suit, drops you and a partner in a large expansive stage, and pits you against enemy mobile suits.

The choice of mobile suits and armors is limited to the ones you’ll find on the original series, Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ, and the movie Char’s Counterattack. You won’t find any suits from the Gundam Wing or Seed franchises in here, and you won’t find any from the Unicorn series either even though that’s set in the same timeline.

Mitsume Ga Tooru/The Three Eyed One (NES/Famicom)

Mitsume ga Tooru is based on the same-titled manga and anime franchise from Osamu Tezuka. You play the role of the bald, three-eyed Hosuke Sharaku, who is supposed to be the last of his kind. The intro shows that another three eyed man named Prince Godaru invaded Sharaku’s city while riding on the ancient tank Gomorrah, Godaru then destroys a large part of the city and kidnaps Sharaku’s friend, Wato Chiyoko. From thereon, you play a sidescrolling/platforming action game similar to Mega Man, using Sharaku’s ability to shoot energy from his third eye and his ability to summon an ancient spear called the Akai Condor, which not only serves as a powerful offensive projectile, but also as an additional platform if you need to jump higher. There’s also a store that you can access at the beginning of each stage where you can buy upgrades for your health, weapons, etc.

Basically, if you enjoy Mega Man, you’ll enjoy Mitsume Ga Tooru. Especially because Mitsume ga Tooru isn’t punishingly difficult. There are a number of things that make it easier than even the least difficult Mega Man game, the most notable being the presence of a health bar, which means you don’t die from one hit. There’s room for mistakes in this game. The controls are fairly responsive and there’s no floatiness so it’s not difficult to do precision jumps despite Sharaku’s limited mobility. Besides, the Akai Condor will help you reach places beyond Sharaku’s jumping ability.

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst (PC)

If the title hasn’t made it clear yet, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst isn’t the first entry in the series. In fact, it isn’t the 3rd one either as the series goes way, way back as it traces its roots to the Clash of Ninja series on the Gamecube. However, it is worth tackling because it is the first one to be ported to the PC, which is amazing because the PC isn’t the platform of choice when it comes to fighting games and games based on anime/manga franchises. Yet here we are, UNS3FB for the PC, with UNS Revolution reportedly following suit.

The Story

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst is a 3D cel-shaded fighting game based on Masashi Kishimoto’s extremely popular shonen franchise, featuring a story mode that takes you from the first appearance of the masked man (spoiler: who claims to be Madara Uchiha but is eventually revealed to be someone else) all the way to the fourth great ninja war.

The progression of the story isn’t linear, as it uses flashbacks to tackle key points from the past (pre-timeskip stories are only addressed in flashbacks.) Additionally, the ending deviates from the story in the manga and anime, probably to give it a proper ending – which it can’t if it tries to remain true to the manga’s (which is still unfinished.)

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (Nintendo DS)

The Nintendo DS isn’t exactly the handheld of choice if you want games based on the Gundam franchise, so Mobile Suit Gundam 00 should at least get points for bringing the franchise to Nintendo’s dual screen handheld. To wit, it’s the best action Gundam game on the DS, but that isn’t saying much considering that it’s the only one on the system (the Gundam Seed-based one was cancelled for who knows what reason.)

The game is Japanese-only, and can be text-heavy. Thankfully, the game itself is an air-combat-based shooter, so it doesn’t require an understanding of the story. And the menus and dialogue scenes can be navigated easily. Personally, I just pressed A like spastic madman until the giant-robot-shooting action starts.

Gameplay-wise, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (Kidou Senshi Gundam 00) uses an engine similar to the one on the PS2, where you’re basically piloting an airplane shaped like a Gundam. There’s no ground combat, and while you do have a melee attack, it’s not as useful as simply shooting down everything that crosses your path. The fact that you’ll end up destroying enemies before they get close enough to recognize makes the game kind of lonely – you’re a lone Gundam shooting down various dark-colored shapes.