ZONE OF THE ENDERS THE 2nd RUNNER : M∀RS / アヌビス ゾーン・オブ・エンダーズ : マーズ
Metal Gear Solid 2’s Cool Younger Brother
You like Vanquish?
This game’s made in 2003, and I think this is the best omni-direction mecha combat action game the market has to offer. The only thing that does outer space high speed mecha combat better than this game is probably Warframe’s Archwing mode.
The game is fun, not many of its kind out there. The controls is fairly responsive, the combat mechanic is deep enough for players to be experimental but not to the point that it is impenetrable. Scenario design is great, variety of situations that keep the player’s engagement fresh (a la Platinum Games). The momentum of the story’s pacing fits the speedy combat gameplay. Progression feels great with the additional tools gradually given in the game to change things up on how you approach combat. It’s a skill based game, so you kinda leveled up yourself to proceed through. The game is challenging even on normal, there’s a side challenge that’s pretty hard even on the easiest difficulty. You have been warned.
– Real player with 19.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mechs Anime Games.
ZONE OF THE ENDERS THE 2nd RUNNER is a fast third-person mecha action game produced by Hideo Kojima. This is a cult title that I have only recently been able to check out. Although a brief game, ZOE2 provides frantic and challenging gameplay despite having a few issues.
STORY
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2351078675
You are Dingo Egret. On Callisto, the Martian moon, he finds a mysterious signal and investigates. It turns out to be an Orbital Frame- a mecha that uses the power of Metatron (the series’ substance of power). AHRAM, a military power, begins attacking and Dingo has to pilot the mech. The mecha’s AI, ADA, gives you a brief introduction to Jehuty, your mech, and you fend off AHRAM. Eventually you come face-to-face with the game’s antagonist: your former commanding officer, Nohman, and his mech, Anubis. You are no match and Nohman asks Dingo to rejoin BAHRAM. He declines and Nohman shoots him, leaving him at death’s door and instructs Ken, his subordinate, to dispose of the body. Instead, she decides to secretly revive Dingo by replacing his destroyed organs and hooking him up to Jehuty as life-support to do her bidding. What follows is his journey back to Mars and to save it from BAHRAM.
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
LEFT ALIVE™
OK so why would i recommend this well, although left alive is full of issues and by no means is a good game is worth trying.
so lets start by stating what may be obvious to anyone reading the extensive, extensive….extensive amount of negative reviews.
As a stealth survivor game it is quite terrible, the lack of options for stealth kills shows it makes it impossible to complete even one part of a mission without being detected.
It also suffers from having a very limited selection of weapons. don’t expect to be surprise. The AI is terrible as well.
– Real player with 36.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mechs Gore Games.
tl;dr Front Mission’s final nail in the coffin. Less so Front Mission, and more so a downgrade of MGSV/MGSurive to PS2 bootleg standards.
The game has barely any Front Mission identity. Sure you get various countries and other terms dropped here and there but outside of that this game is a MGS ripoff, trying as hard as possible to rip off various stealth concepts and survival-crafting concepts from MGSV and MGSurvive. The game’s story too tries hard to lecture you about war in some attempt to be MGS.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Brigador Killers
BRIGADOR KILLERS is an intense story-driven isometric action game. Can a secret hit team of Solo Nobreans get revenge on the traitors deep in enemy territory, and still get out alive? The mercenary violence of BRIGADOR (2016) spills over onto a new planet, with revised controls and an all-new storyline mode.
WISHLIST NOW!
Read More: Best Mechs Isometric Games.
Muv-Luv Alternative (マブラヴ オルタネイティヴ)
It is really worth its #1 VN in VNDB, it was worht the time i spent playing the 3 games. Muv Luv Extra, Unilimited and at the end this one, i might be one of those who really liked extra a lot and was meaningfull for me, so people who wants to play it and looking at this review for a chance, give a try and just stick with it, feel it and enjoy it, dont play it like challenging you to finish it asap, just enjoy the game and you will feel like living like Takeru in their world and understand and suffer all the things he had to endure with, and avoid spoilers, it might be obvious and for some people it normally doesnt kill the thing, but believe it kills like 60% of the feelings if you know what is going to happen, and when you finish the game you can go check all the awesome info about Muv Luv you can find, it is worth it and very interesting
– Real player with 116.8 hrs in game
It’s good, but I don’t recommend it.
Overall - one of the best and worst VNs I’ve read. World presentation and history itself were superb. Although scenario had huge dips where I struggled not to skip dialogs about “resolve”, long- and short-term goals, unconvincing drama etc. The same stuff was talked about over and over again. Also, for the game this long there is not enough music tracks, so they are overused. Apart from that - great presentation, action scenes (not typical for VNs) and EPIC story. There are not many FMVs but there are moments where reading it feels like watching big budget sci-fi movie.
– Real player with 114.3 hrs in game
Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot
Half-Cooked for Wolfenstein and VR Fans Alike
I think I had realistic expectations for Cyberpilot. I could tell from the lack of coverage this was one of those obligatory VR spinoffs just so a franchise has some representation in the VR marketplace. It wasn’t going to be anything great but I love VR and I love Wolfenstein so I figured there’d be enough novelty to satisfy me. I was expecting something similar to Batman: Arkham VR, where there’s a very short adventure simulating some (but not many) of the franchises iconic moments in VR and then you get some virtual toys to play around with.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers
You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/zkCcELQwB90
I bought this game from a 3rd party website for 12% off the normal price of $19.99 USD. Whole game took me 3 hours to complete. I spent at least 30 of those minutes just getting around the bugs that I encountered during my gameplay.
Overall, I would say the game is rather mediocre. There’s nothing that really stands out about the title or the VR implementation. It’s rather surprising this effort comes from a Triple A publisher like Bethesda. I would rather they had spent the money they wasted on this project have gone into converting some of their older titles into VR. It would have been a much better investment for Zenimax.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Drone: Remote Tactical Warfare
It is a great pure strategy game, where you have to manage a dron, and infiltrate on enemy bases, perform repair operations, hacking, use of mines, … Obtaining thus, the objectives proposed, avoiding being fried by the bullets. It has variety of missions, the first missions are important, because they are designed to familiarize you with the controls, and thus to use in more advanced missions all the available resources, that will make the enemy soldiers finish dead or retire dead of fear.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Muv-Luv photonmelodies♮
Pros:
-They got rid of some minigames in Altered Fable that were mandatory for progression and extremely difficult
-The translation job is fairly competent, albeit I think they took some creative liberties at times.
-It’s a nice bundle of stories from the Muv-Luv-verse
Cons: There’s a decent chunk of cut content from Altered Fable (namely H-scenes) that fans all agreed they wanted to keep included, but were lied to
Some of the aforementioned creative liberties in translation are…off-putting at times.
– Real player with 83.8 hrs in game
Note: This is not a classic game. It’s like an anime with subtitles, but most of the time, the images don’t move, meaning there are only slight animations. You should be prepared to read a lot and also should have already read Muv-Luv (+ hidden Unlimited) and Alternative first - otherwise you will miss out on a lot of plot and details. Even though they are set in a different universe, as you should know by know, there are a lot of similarities.
This game is the 2nd fandisc of Muv-Luv and features 3 BIG stories.
– Real player with 63.4 hrs in game
Wrath of Anna
The only reason I have 7.3 hours of Wrath of Anna logged (woefully making it impossible to try to get a refund..) is that I left the game alt-tabbed after it failed to boot up an online match (but seemed to freeze and never loaded the main menu again) and I left to go do something else, forgetting about it.
Look closely at the footage in this game’s trailer. No interaction is shown with any enemy, object, or NPCs, instead the player character is mindlessly meandering through the environments, occassionally ducking and staring at something in the distance. You will get all of this and nothing more if you choose to spend your money on Wrath of Anna. Wrath of Anna is perhaps best summarized by one of the screenshots the dev has selected in the preview images, a stairway to nowhere, shrouded in fog. This game has a cool setting but is completely devoid of anything of substance.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
I was given this game for free very early on in its development. Every once in a while I will reinstall it to see what is going on with it, and so far it seems like the DEV can’t quite make up their mind on what they want this game to be. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it might show their willingness to move away from their initial plans for this game.
When I first tried this game it was very rough. It seemed to mainly be an early attempt at a large scale PVP game similiar to CSGO. However, the game was extremely rough and I was never able to actually play with anyone. You had to manually input IP addresses, so no… there was also mentions of a single player story mode. Initially this game page had screenshots of mechs and something that looked like a giant sandworm. Those screenshots have now been replaced with screenshots of what look like the beginning of an attempt to make another survival game.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
Baldr Sky
I’m not really sure what to say about the experience that is Baldr Sky. There is so very much I could get into, but saying anything too specific feels like reviewing Muv-Luv Alternative as if it was a stand alone work.
While being nothing alike in ways, Baldr Sky does check a lot of the same boxes and as it is much lesser known, I’ll just mention those similarities first.
-It is very creative, well thought out and complex.
-It is very sci-fi centric and technical without being dry.
-It is an incredibly engaging, edge-of-your-seat read.
– Real player with 275.7 hrs in game
Baldr Sky is one of the best recent VNs and JRPGs to have been localised to the West, delivering an entertaining story, memorable characters, and robust action RPG combat.
It’s set in a cyberpunk vision of urban Japan in the aftermath of a tragedy called Gray Christmas, which left an entire city in ruins. Local and federal governments, a private corporation, a research team and a religious cult are implicated in the event, with each party blaming the others. The survivors who comprise the bulk of the main cast include alumni of an esteemed school, who believe they had been witness to suspicious events prior to the disaster during their school days.
– Real player with 196.1 hrs in game
Mecha Knights: Nightmare
As someone who loves the mecha genre, I was excited for Mecha Knights: Nightmare’s release, and I was not disappointed. There is a lot of customization within the game, allowing for many different builds - though explosives are the current meta. The randomized drops foster experimentation with new equipment and weapons, often leading to discoveries you would not have found by relying on stats alone. The many types of weapons having a distinct feel and varying use making your choices feel like they actually matter, which is something often lacking in games, where every weapon has a very similar feel.
– Real player with 82.7 hrs in game
tl;dr: I really like this game. For $15 it isn’t bad at all.
I have some issues with it, related almost entirely to the story, not the game itself. I’ll grade it in a normal SPAG (Story, Performance, Aesthetics, Gameplay) method. It will be mostly my thoughts on the story element (IMO) issues, though.
=== Story ===
So the story in this game is bad, but in a manner that is so inoffensive I cannot tell if it wants to set itself up in the next game as being satire or serious. I’m assuming there will be a next game, if only to introduce swords and such.
– Real player with 21.5 hrs in game