Gungriffon Blaze was a Playstation 2 launch title. Set in a devastated post World War III world, the player plays as a mech equipped UN soldier who must maintain peace.
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For the person in your life who thinks Armored Core is too character-focused and well-produced; as I understand it, this an outlier amongst the other GunGriffon games for its arcade style, putting a major emphasis on replaying levels on different difficulty levels, chasing high scores and amassing an massive collection of weapons and gear- playing out something like EDF in practice. This comes with a familiar catch: While each of the pilotable mechs has a base loadout, taking an optional third weapon or any upgrades uses them up in your inventory. Combined with a cumulative progression system that rewards you with more weapons and better versions of old upgrades, grinding out easy missions and dipping into higher difficulties to unlock more gear to use in your legitimate attempts becomes a pretty clear strategy.
The idea of using up gear isn’t even terrible in theory: rework the structure so you couldn’t farm for extra parts and had to plan around a single playthrough, choosing when and where to use them could be a great challenge- and might also be a clever way of getting you to see the full range of the game’s arsenal in comparison to the tunnel vision brought on investment in your build seen in something like Armored Core.
Definitely a disappointing consideration for a game with such nice fundamentals- controlling your AWGS has a great heft to it, with a turning speed so slow that you’ll need to factor it in when approaching engagements or dedicate one of your upgrade slots to making yourself more mobile. Any attempt I made to dive into groups of enemies was met with a quick game over and so I spent a surprising amount of time trying finding a vantage point to attack enemies before they ever became a threat. (And makes the mission timer all the more important, as it would be so tempting to stay in place otherwise.) I imagine it’s just as true for other GunGriffon games, but the result is that it feels decidedly more like an exceptionally-adaptable weapons platform than as a high-speed mecha, taking pot-shots at armored columns in the distance.
The six missions here nicely reinforce this unique feeling, half focused on assaulting enemy fortifications and half seeing you protect allies from waves of enemy attackers. It’s a good balance, with the escort missions being particular highlights, forcing you to move around different points on the map to cut off enemy reinforcements and trying to get the most value out of your limited-use jump as you mitigate the damage done to your allies. I don’t think they’re so transcendent as to warrant the amount of time you’ll spend in them, but that speaks to the problem of the game more broadly- something whose limitations seem mostly owed to being a budget title, and one seemingly made in part to hit the launch window of the PS2.
Not great, not terrible: think its lean, blue-sky wargaming will carry it for anyone who’s really curious, but its emphasis on sifting through an ever-growing collection of gear ended up souring my experience a bit. Despite its sparseness, it still could benefit from some cuts! (Feels like with some rebalancing it could’ve made a great cabinet, especially with the unorthodox controls where you aim with the left analog stick and move and strafe with the right stick- the kind of unwieldy scheme that’d be totally sold by a mock-up cockpit and some gaudy peripherals.)
The idea of using up gear isn’t even terrible in theory: rework the structure so you couldn’t farm for extra parts and had to plan around a single playthrough, choosing when and where to use them could be a great challenge- and might also be a clever way of getting you to see the full range of the game’s arsenal in comparison to the tunnel vision brought on investment in your build seen in something like Armored Core.
Definitely a disappointing consideration for a game with such nice fundamentals- controlling your AWGS has a great heft to it, with a turning speed so slow that you’ll need to factor it in when approaching engagements or dedicate one of your upgrade slots to making yourself more mobile. Any attempt I made to dive into groups of enemies was met with a quick game over and so I spent a surprising amount of time trying finding a vantage point to attack enemies before they ever became a threat. (And makes the mission timer all the more important, as it would be so tempting to stay in place otherwise.) I imagine it’s just as true for other GunGriffon games, but the result is that it feels decidedly more like an exceptionally-adaptable weapons platform than as a high-speed mecha, taking pot-shots at armored columns in the distance.
The six missions here nicely reinforce this unique feeling, half focused on assaulting enemy fortifications and half seeing you protect allies from waves of enemy attackers. It’s a good balance, with the escort missions being particular highlights, forcing you to move around different points on the map to cut off enemy reinforcements and trying to get the most value out of your limited-use jump as you mitigate the damage done to your allies. I don’t think they’re so transcendent as to warrant the amount of time you’ll spend in them, but that speaks to the problem of the game more broadly- something whose limitations seem mostly owed to being a budget title, and one seemingly made in part to hit the launch window of the PS2.
Not great, not terrible: think its lean, blue-sky wargaming will carry it for anyone who’s really curious, but its emphasis on sifting through an ever-growing collection of gear ended up souring my experience a bit. Despite its sparseness, it still could benefit from some cuts! (Feels like with some rebalancing it could’ve made a great cabinet, especially with the unorthodox controls where you aim with the left analog stick and move and strafe with the right stick- the kind of unwieldy scheme that’d be totally sold by a mock-up cockpit and some gaudy peripherals.)