IGN posted some impressions of a pre-alpha version of Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury, coming to Xbox Live Arcade. It sounds like the new game stays true to the formula used by Bangai-O on the Dreamcast and Bangai-O Spirits on the Nintendo DS, and notably includes a level editor like Spirits did, which will allow users to send their creations to their online friends, although without the DS version’s really cool/really finicky Sound Loud feature.

The new game returns to the Dreamcast version’s control setup, with one stick being used to move your mecha and the other controlling the direction of your shots, which likely means a return to a completely manic pace, as opposed to Spirits’ methodically and strategically manic pace. It’s a setup that should likely be familiar with the rebirth of arena shooters after the popularity enjoyed by Geometry Wars on the XBLA, and thus hopefully can attract a larger audience than the cult classic originals.

The original Bangai-O managed to incorporate a number of important and intrinsically mecha elements into its gameplay, such as the Itano Circus of missiles being unloaded and the use of shots and missile fratricide to carve out areas of relative safety. The control of the titular robot Bangai-O itself also had a certain amount of heft and weight to it when you weren’t actively dashing, and its ability to shoot more missiles the more imminent danger the Bangai-O was in was a decidedly Super Robot mechanic. The more intense the danger, the hotter Bangai-O’s spirit burns! If you’re curious about the series, then make sure to check out our feature on the games.

The current price point seems to be 800 Xbox Points, which likely averages out to be less than 1 Point per missile onscreen at once.

To accompany the latest promo video, 4Gamer has a veritable onslaught of in-game screenshots for the upcoming Super Robot Wars L. From Macross Frontier to Dancouga Nova, the screens show off the new shows that will grace the game. Our favourite is probably Linebarrel, as we have a soft spot for the manga (the Alter toy is also utterly magnificent). In addition, in some fervent quarters of the net mecha gamers have mistaken the word “some” with “all” in our previous post regarding the re-using of animation assets for the handheld Super Robot Wars games. It’s plainly obvious that Banpresto do re-use assets between the various SRW games, arguably more with the recent handheld outings, but this doesn’t obviously equate to “all” the assets in the games. So as King Gainer’s overfreeze attack would suggest, chill.

Update: Play-Asia are now taking preorders for the game.

The upcoming Super Robot Wars L has received its first promo video (which was shown at C3xHOBBY over the weekend). Despite the nice new Macross Frontier shots, the remaining animation does look awfully recycled and in some instances almost GameBoy Advance in sprite quality. It will be interesting to see what this entry will be like though as SRWK was really quite short, though with any luck it may utilise some of that version’s game system. The game will retail at 6,090 yen on November 25th.

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Amongst a bevy of other games, SEGA will also have a playable version of Virtual On Force at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. Whether they’ll have any of HORI’s sticks at the show remains unconfirmed but rumours are that a select few will be present for punters to try out. Considering that these are pre-order only items it seems a tad unfair to show people something they can’t actually buy. With any luck the aforementioned fetish unlock code won’t be present at the show.

4Gamer has a nice bit of coverage on Gundam Extreme Versus’ presence at this year’s C3xHOBBY. Despite the presence of Kazuki Yao, the voice of Judau Ashta (amongst many others), the interesting announcement is the presence of a new Kunio Okawara design in the game, called the Extreme Gundam. Similar in many ways to the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam but it also has a reverse “face” currently hidden from view. This will be a boss unit in the game and there’s no word on whether it will be playable as yet.

The upcoming Super Robot Wars OG anime directed by none other than Masami Ōbari has finally received its first PV (shown below). Despite the somewhat unnerving character design, having the cockpits shake and rattle in both the PTX-007-03C Weißritter and PTX-003C Alteisen is rather refreshing. The PV is also quite long too and shows a good chunk of footage.

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Over at this year’s C3xHOBBY show, all manner of new kits and toys have been displayed. Of note are the figures made by Griffon Enterprises, as they will feature prominent mecha from various Armored Core games. The first of which will be the updated Nineball as seen in Armored Core Ninebreaker in the spring of next year, shortly followed by Dual Face from Armored Core Nexus. Both of these will be around 12cm tall and made from PVC. It must be said though that even in prototype form, the Nineball toy has a wonderful sculpt to it and it also seems the grenade launcher will be articulated as well.

As the release date for Front Mission Evolved looms ever closer, the marketing campaign is going into overdrive. From appearances of the game at GamesCom to a somewhat spurious “interactive trailer” (linked below). We’re still a bit sceptical about the game, as the wanzers appear a tad twitchy. In any case, we’ll know for sure when it’s released at the end of September.

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When ACE:R was announced, there was a sizeable amount and quite justifiable excitement over the game. As this would be the first entry to be in HD on a new and more powerful console. However, as this was meant as “rebirth” Banpresto mistakenly involved the SRW team on the production, most probably to bring the two massive franchises into a closer alignment – or some such mind numbingly stupid corporate agenda. The outcome is something rather unfortunate indeed.

Before I delve into ACE:R it’s worth clarifying what made the first three ACE games such great fun to play. Despite being based around a variety of very specific mecha licenses, each of which had esoteric nuances of their own, From Software picked a functional middle ground and then riffed off that for each series. This meant the core of the game had to give a large amount of control to the player to make the pop-cultural nods to various anime series work.

This transpired via a a two tiered combat setup, you could either fly around and shoot with greater accuracy or initiate a boost dash that limited your turning rate and forced you to find a good ballistic arc on your shots. Couple with this the ability to do quick lateral boosts for dodging, which also fed into your boost gauge, meant you you had lots of movement options at your disposal and a very fluid animation system that could be interrupted at any point. Added to all this was the fact that all your weapons were active on start of each mission and whilst often infinite in ammunition they had to be managed in terms of their reload rates.

The last aspect of the older ACE games was the camera setup, as it allowed you to not only look at your mecha from any angle in game but also aid in what targets you wanted to select. You literally would reposition the camera towards an enemy and select it directly.

As the games progressed, the boost dash became more nuanced as dashing directly past an enemy would put you at a disadvantage as it would turn the mecha around and have you boost backwards at a slower rate – leaving you vulnerable to attack. The weapons also became more numerous per unit and easier to manage. Not to mention the wonderful aspect of having in-game cel shaded characters from the respective series to ground the respective licenses in their host anime.

All of the above is now pretty much absent from ACE:R.

In place of the original boost dash is a new approach that only really allows the player to cover distances quickly, you can’t fire your weapons during this now and the animation delay means you have to gauge when to release the dash – otherwise you’ll often over shoot a target. This means the only real way to initiate combat is via the non-boosting mode of movement, which leaves you vulnerable (as it did in the original games). To make matters more awkward, doing quick boosts isn’t a simple matter of just flicking the left analogue stick but a combination of a direction and pressing the X button. Couple this with an appalling lack of feedback on how many times you can quick dash without being left prone, originally you just had to manage a boost gauge but now you have to second guess the mecha’s animation instead, makes the whole aspect of movement very frustrating. Just the basics of moving around the environment have been become very restrictive, to the extent the changes feel wholly necessary. There is a new shield option, that negates most ranged attacks from enemies, but this is something that doesn’t work very well as the game doesn’t really message the types of attacks which will actually cause you damage.

Apart from the neutered approach to movement, the game now drastically limits each of your weapons in terms of their usage. This is the down to a new “Tension” system that fills up when you use your very basic (read: awfully weak) range weapon or close-combat. Each time a bar is filled that unlocks other attacks, the more bars you have available the more powerful attacks you can use. This is one of those design decisions that, on paper, sounds brilliant but in reality is not too dissimilar to nailing your gentleman vegetables to a wall.

To clarify, each mecha has its signature attacks and weapons effectively locked-out from use from the start of each mission. To make matters worse, in order to have enough tension bars available you need to upgrade the new pilots stats. So not only does the game deny you much of the combat variance from the off but it also expects the player to grind away before they can even use them effectively.

There are also awful interface decisions with the tension system too, as each panel has to be scrolled through to reach the different attacks. This means you can often have one or more panels that act as a deadzone to reach the attack you want. This is in stark contrast to the original games’ approach, where all the attacks were directly available.

The final element that really ruins this game is down to how it deals with mecha transformation and consequent control knock on that now affects the game camera. Specifically, someone played Artdink’s recent Macross PSP games and decided to copy the controls that mapped the transformation to a direction input on the analogue nub. This worked brilliantly on the PSP as you could pick any mode of your variable fighter with a simple directional flick. This functionality is now present in ACE:R for all mecha that transform, but the controls have been mapped to the right analogue stick instead of the d-pad. This means the camera control, that facilitated the specific lock-on to enemies is now absent – as it now needs a combination input (with L2) and it has look spring not to mention reverting back to your orientated view when released, which is just awkward. What transpires is a nightmarish selection of lock-on options, none of which let you really pick the target you want during game.

Annoyingly, the transformation setup also massively limits the usage of the mecha modes of most of the mecha now too – with the Macross Frontier units being notable. This is down to the change in setup for units that don’t hover in their respective series. Meaning that the player has to manually maintain altitude via the shoulder buttons. In addition, the armored variants from Macross Frontier can’t be used on the ground based stages in the game – something that was dropped in the last ACE game on the PS2 as it was just annoying (despite being accurate to the series in question). Not being able to freely fly around in battroid mode, like the older games, is just idiotic too.

Overall then the game is a functional mess and whilst playable it’s not really enjoyable as the overt restrictions make it very frustrating – simply because you never truly feel in control of the mecha you’ve selected.

The presentation is also pretty budget too, as inter-mission narrative segments look as though they were lifted straight from SRW XO and they lack any kind of spoken dialogue. The in-game cut-scenes are also criminally long and the character animation on the face, when shown as a thumbnail in the corners of the screen, is just laughable. As all they do is generically move their mouths without actually being in-sync with the speech. Again, all this being in stark contrast to the previous two games where entire characters were rendered and animated in cel-shaded 3D models. To add insult to injury, vast swathes of these awful cut-scenes are unskippable and accompanied by the catchy notification of “not skip movie”.

The thing about all these changes, is that many of them feel SRW induced. From the tension system, to the grinding of pilot stats and the annoying menu system in the game’s front end; it’s all very out of place. The biggest tell tale sign though is the emphasis on long and rigid animations. In that the game, to look at at least, appears dynamic and impressive but when you actually play it is just plain unwieldy. Even the overtly generic quick dash “teleport” animation that all the mecha use seems like the unavoidable concession From Software had to make in order to fit in all the verbose melee animations (this being a criminal waste, as the original games had wonderful and unique animations for each of the mecha – which gave them character and helped to cement them in the mythos their host series had created).

The sad thing is that ACE:R has sold very well already, almost guaranteeing further sequels. However, Banpresto need to realise that the sales stemmed from the genuine quality of the three previous games and not this one. Considering the pretty widespread gamer dissatisfaction with the game, here’s hoping Banpresto step away from the series and let From Software do their jobs again.

Tamashii: 5/10

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Game Watch has announced that on release of Virtual On Force in December customers who pre-ordered the game will have access to a “fetish unlock code”. This will allow players to increase the chest size of both Fei-Yen and Angelan, effectively giving the VR’s larger robotic breasts (pictured above).

Being a long-term player of the games, I find this “feature” palpably creepy and more than a little unsettling.