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.