Recently at E3 2010, Bungie in cooperation with Idea Planet unveiled life size statues of Noble Team, from the upcoming Halo:Reach. The Spartan III battle armors have taken a significant aesthetic change from the series’s prior genre convention power armor, and seem to have undergone a heavily militarized look. While not quite resembling the masterful Starship Trooper’s OVA cap troopers, designed by Miyatake Kazutaka, the Spartan III armors seem to suggest a greater sense of realism and actual mobility. Previously mentioned on this site, the growing influence of Yutaka Izubuchi’s GM Sniper II becomes even more apparent in Halo:Reach as evidenced by the Spartan III armor’s customizable visors and magnifying optics. In the video, the lead artist briefly explains the delicate construction of the statues and gives the viewer a good perspective on just how large the actual Spartans are.

Famitsu have got the scoop on the new Carnage Heart EXA for the PSP that’s coming out in October. For those unfamiliar with the Carnage Heart games, these have historically had the player program the game’s mecha, called Overkill Engines (or OKEs), before sending them into battle to fight on their own. At the time of the original game’s release, this type of approach to mecha gaming was unique and Artdink have fashioned a unique niche for the series ever since.

EXA will be the second PSP game in the Carnage Heart series, as Portable was released a good few years ago now. Despite having an all new dating-sim-esque scenario mode, EXA will also allow the player to manually control their OKEs. Admittedly, the older games had this option available but it was only a cheat, whereas this will be actually a full fledged mode now. Naturally, what with all the Gundam Battle and Macross games Artdink have been making recently, this shift shouldn’t be too much of issue for them.

If the above sounds a bit familiar, then you may be thinking of Armored Core Formula Front as it was a game that used a similar setup to Carnage Heart’s and was released for the PSP’s launch back in 2004 (though it also got a rather cool PS2 port too). In any case, it’s nice to see that they’re still using some of Kow Yokoyama’s mecha designs for the OKEs in EXA. That makes us happy inside.

The official Virtual On Force blog kindly reminded fans today that the HORI TwinStick EX pre-orders will stop tomorrow (30th June). We’ll know shortly after that whether HORI and SEGA reached the minimum number of pre-orders before they can greenlight the production of the sticks again. Fingers crossed.

What with this year’s BotCon having finished over the weekend, the peeps over at TFORMERS.com have uploaded a rather interesting Q&A session with some of the team members who worked on the recently released War for Cybertron. Both Matt Tieger and Aaron Archer talked a fair bit about various aspects of the game but some of the more curious tidbits where the mention of future games that were either to be RPG orientated or even a Twisted Metal-type racer. Bear in mind that these comments were more of the “wishlist” variety and by no means binding, but at the very least it’s a refreshing take and one that does break out of the overtly standardised genre types.

As for the game itself, we’ll be reviewing it very shortly and overall we were very impressed with High Moon’s effort. Considering that the Transformers series often gets a bum deal with games, it’s a great relief to finally play one that doesn’t suck horribly.

The much loved Real Grade 1/1 scale Gundam has almost been fully resurrected in its new home next to Shizuoka station. Over at Japan Probe they’ve managed to nab a nice video of the almost finished behemoth. What’s interesting now is that the beam sabre is present in the right hand of the mobile suit, something that will act as a bright pink light fixture in the oncoming months. Not to miss a trick, Bandai are booting a new model kit line at 1/144 scale with the same moniker as this beastie. The new “Real Grade” kits will sport much of the gimmicks of their larger Master and Perfect Grade brethren, with a fully poseable endoskeleton being amongst them. One of the first of these is naturally the RX-78-2 Gundam with the same markings as its full size brother. Anyway, enjoy the video below and remember that the full size Gundam is open to the public again on July 24th.

Over at 4gamer they have some excellent new coverage for Gundam Extreme Versus, featuring a veritable overload of new screenshots for the hotly anticipated arcade game. Most of these feature the new units that will be featured in the game, as well as the more familiar entries from the previous Gundam Versus games. In any case, it’s still looking utterly superb and considering the System 357 board it’s running on we can’t wait to get our mitts on the inevitable PlayStation 3 port.

Over at Game Watch, they’ve been covering the SEGA PRIVATE SHOW 2010 SUMMER and tucked within that is the news of a Border Break update. Technically a new game it’s still falling under the versioning of the original (so this game is literally Ver 2.0). With the subtitle of “Airburst” the biggest addition is that the game has doubled in network capacity; from 10 vs 10 players per side to 20 vs 20. That alone is a pretty epic increase in scope. In addition, the name “airburst” also refers to a new aerial dash manoeuvre and that the new game will feature sea based levels. All in all, it’s clear that SEGA are happy to support Border Break for the forseeable future. Still no word on a home port though, sadly.

Over at Gpara and Game Watch, they’ve covered the recent announcement regarding the new OG (or “original generation”) mecha to feature in the upcoming Another Century’s Episode R. In addition, there are a slew of new screenshots for a lot of the licensed mecha – with the Macross Zero and Frontier shots looking jaw-droppingly amazing. What’s interesting thus far is how conspicuously absent the Nu Gundam has been. Considering that this is the only unit from the epic Char’s Counterattack to be featured in ACE R it seems odd that no press materials have covered this iconic design. The eternal optimist in me hopes that this is due to the fact that the game won’t just feature a single Nu Gundam but also all its multitudinous variants. In short, we’d be ecstatic at the chance of having the Hi-Nu Gundam featured in the game.

During an impromptu interview held in a hotel bathroom, mecha fans’ hopes for a new game in the Zone of the Enders series were dashed as Hideo Kojima explained that the project currently receiving his direct attention wasn’t Zone of the Enders 3. He is already supervising the development of the new 3D Castlevania, “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow”, and Metal Gear Solid Rising, so Kojima has his fingers in too many pies to do a ZoE sequel justice.

While Mecha Damashii’s response to the ZoE games has been ambivalent at times, the franchise itself has much more potential than was ever realized in the actual games, and we’d love to get our grubby mitts on a third installment. While some of the franchise’s mechanics are in serious need of a tune-up, the background story and narrative of the games have always lived up to the promise of having Hideo Kojima’s name associated with them, and I don’t doubt that Konami, if they gave a third ZoE game their full attention, could get the functional issues out of the way.

Unlike, say, From Software, Konami doesn’t have the distinct advantage of being a mecha games-centric company, and it takes time and hard work to develop a team capable of delivering something on the level of Armored Core, and I don’t think any company or game designer could perform that feat without giving the project their fullest attention. It’s worth noting the games reviewed well (despite selling poorly), so a spruced-up ZoE could be absolutely killer.

Let’s just hope we see the Vic Viper from Gradius again, seeing as how the venerable shmup spaceship has been inexplicably replaced with, uh, teenage girls.

The swirling chaos that is E3 is almost over, and while it will be some time before anyone can make sense of what this raw data pulse from the games industry actually means, there have been a few mecha-related sightings and announcements for the observant mechanical fanatic.

One of the biggest surprises of the show came in this trailer for the campaign of Halo: Reach, which revealed the presence of space fighter combat. While a lot of FPS fans were shocked by the news, Halo has always had an emphasis on using vehicles, so this is really just an extreme extension of that. More interesting to mecha gaming fans, perhaps, is how Real Robot the Spartan designs now look. While we have talked about the Spartan design and its similarities to Yutaka Izubuchi’s work before, specifically the GM Sniper II and GM Command, the comparison to Japanese Real Robot design is even more pronounced now. The squad of Spartans we see all have different kinds of equipment, and therefore distinct visual looks, which describe their role type on the battlefield. This is something that mecha games have been doing for years and now more mainstream games are finally catching up. Some of the interviews and information being leaked out talk about being able to customize your player character Spartan with different weapons, equipment and aesthetic features, making the character more like a human wearing powered armor and less like a generic guy with guns (something we talked a bit about last week with Vanquish).

Speaking of Vanquish, there’s a gameplay video from the E3 floor which shows the protagonist hopping on and controlling what reminds me of the Regult battle pod from Macross. Vanquish continues to look as amazing as ever and the interesting mixture of Western and Japanese game ideas will hopefully inject some much-needed lifeblood into the ‘third person shooter’ genre.

And more directly mecha related, I was happy to see in the new Warhammer 40,000 MMO trailer some of the massive robotic weapons the Warhammer 40k universe has to offer. While actual details on the game are currently light, and no one seems to be able to tell us whether we will control some of these mechanical monstrosities or if they’re just the 40k MMO equivalent to World of Warcraft’s raid bosses, it does seem as if the developer is trying to incorporate some of the more epic-scaled elements of the 40k universe rather than just making the WoW clone that everyone else is trying to make. I refuse to believe there can be anything bad about a fictional universe that agrees with Mobile Suit Gundam’s assertion that vehicles painted red go faster, at any rate.