FFVIIFan's Game Review, Ed. 2 - Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire

    I wanted to get one more review done before the new releases start coming out for the Playstation 3.  I figured that because my first review was for the best Playstation 3 game currently I might as well make the second one on the worst.  Now before I continue with the actual review I have to say that I am a huge fan of the anime series and have seen almost all of them, and I buy every gundam game that has come out simply because I love the series.  Yet, I am not so blind to say that the games are even decent.  Each one is even more poorly done than the last.  Hopefully Musou will change this series gaming history, but that's a different topic.  Here is a quick review on how I score games.

• Audio - This includes the soundtrack, sound effects, and voice chatting while online.
• Visual - Simply how good the game look.
• Gameplay - What you actually do in the game.

A game will be awarded up to ten points in each category, meaning a perfect game will receive a score of 30.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire
Playstation 3
Bandai Namco Games

Audio - 4
    The best thing I can say is at least the game has sounds.  The beam rifle sounds like a beam rifle, machine gun sounds like a machine gun, and the thrusters sound like thrusters.  One of the more annoying aspects was the delay of sounds though.  The noise clip for your suit would stop sometimes or the machine gun fire noise would continue after you had stopped shooting ... sometimes a while ago.  Delayed explosion noises were also bad.  The worst part though was the voice overs.  There was maybe 15 sound clips of your fellow soldiers communicating, that's it.  After your 30th battle (if you're still playing) you'll be hearing their annoying chatter for the hundredth time.  Hell, they even miss pronounced Medeas.

Visual - 4
    It looks like a really good Playstation 2 game.  Compared to next-gen games this was just disappointing.  The environments were just barren.  Trees did not fall when you walked through them.  It has the worst water ripple effects I have ever seen.  The mobile suits themselves looked okay, but it got a little weird when they took damage.  Instead of the suit looking like it took damage you could see that really there was just an invisible 'bubble layer' with all the damage on it.  So it really just looks like your mech has a floating pot-mark over it.

Gameplay - 5
    A five is being generous.  That's coming from me who is a Gundam diehard.  If you don't like Gundam this game is a 1.  If you don't like Mech games buy this game just so you can have the pleasure of burning it.  The framerate was horrible.  There would be frequent drops in it, and sometimes the framerate was crap regardless of what you did.  You could be standing still with no enemies with only your little ally tank stuttering on its way.  Locking on can be frustrating.  You can enter 'sniper mode' but its pointless.  It does not add any strategy to the game.  There is multiplayer, and its only 1 v 1.  Despite all the games faults, even in its top form this would not be a good multiplayer game.  Its just not built for it.  The higher damage weapons can destroy an unblocking suit with one shot.  You end up with matches lasting 20 seconds.  I could go on and on but I honestly can't remember all that disappointed me in this game.

Bottom Line - 13