Polyphony Digital at the time of of writing this review have made 17 games since their founding in 1994. 16 of these are racing games with Omega Boost, a 3D mech action game being the one outlier in their repertoire. With the lead programmer on Omega Boost being Yuji Yasuhara (Panzer Dragoon Zwei), the mech designs by Shoji Kawamori (Macross, Visions of Escaflowne, Transformers) it's kind of amazing this is somewhat of a hidden gem considering the pedigree behind it.

And the thing is, a gem it really is. This is the first time I've played it in the 25 years since it's original release and it's amazing how well it holds up. The most impressive thing about it is actually the control scheme. It's simple yet highly effective at allowing players to traverse 3D environments having dog fights with a variety of enemies. It essentially uses 5 buttons. Boost, fire, special, hover and lock on. That's it. Your mech, The Omega Boost will always move forward unless you hover which will lock you in place from auto moving. This with the lock on that will auto target you facing the nearest enemy allows for a surprising degree of control in aiming, moving and shooting all at once that still holds up better than some more recent games. Once used to them you can strafe around targets, stop to fire, boost away and reacquire all with ease.

It has a very arcade feel to it with only two main weapons of a rapid fire gun and homing lasers when held down called boost. You get a special with a bar that builds up that does great damage but can only use sparingly but there are no other options or upgrades so to speak. There are 9 levels in total and each one you get scored on for how quickly you can beat them and the amount of enemies killed which can unlock more boost lock on segments to hit more targets at once. The game probably takes an hour or so to beat if you play straight and know what you are doing but it took me longer due to the aforementioned roots above. You only get 5 continues and only recover a chunk of life at the end of each level rather than starting full. I can think of no reason to do this other than to create an artificial difficulty. Honestly, I found it really pointlessly annoying as I would have almost full health but not quite at the start of each level. Just why?

The levels themselves are pretty varied and have this great chunky mechanical industrial feel to them that PSX visuals did so well. Initially I thought this would be a purely space based shooter but very early on you end up fighting ships in planet atmospheres watching them explode onto the planet as you destroy them, artificial tunnels with giant robots, sand plains with floating embers like a giant fire in the darkness as you fight a variety of enemies with some really creative bosses. I really hated the final couple of levels though with a needless difficulty spike. One of them has an annoying timer to beat two bosses then a very tough mini boss rush to finish that feel a little thrown together with no level before them. Maybe on sequential play throughs that would be easier but with only 5 continues and having to start the whole level over if you die it's just needlessly brutal.

The story is kind of basic. Essentially you are trying to go back in time to prevent a catastrophe where humanity are losing a war with an AI. It's presented in cutscenes that use a mixture of live action actors and CGI. The opening video if left to play seems to have a surprisingly high budget of a command centre, getting into the Omega Boost and flying off all to a completely out of place rock song. The rest of the music except the end credits sound more like something from Nier which I feel fit the aesthetic far better. The music feels bizarrely inconsistent in places though I like the actual cutscenes themselves, extremely 90's and I mean that in the best way.

So even with it's minor flaws, Omega Boost is a pretty crazy intense game that looks amazing. To think Polphony Digital made this cool 3D mech game and then went on to make nothing but racing games forever more will never not feel like wasted potential to me.

The US TV advert for Omega Boost as an extra.

+ Controls are really fluid, they hold up amazingly well.
+ Varied levels and fantastic visuals.
+ Some great music....

-....Also some really out of place music. It's like someone's put their rock track over the opening and ending videos for no reason.
- Brutal continue system and life recovery between levels just take some of the fun away from actually playing the game.

A 3D mech shooter which blows my mind in managing to capture the feeling of the kinds of dogfights you see in anime between two mechs or otherwise flying characters zipping about blasting at each other. Frankly I didn't think it was possible, but with its mechanic of being able to orient the player's movement in a sphere around locked-on targets but still aim independently to said lock-on, it makes for a shockingly fluid control scheme which solves a lot of the difficulties of full 3D movement more elegantly than a lot of games released after it. The mechanic of locking on to the same target multiple times before firing to deal more damage per shot also helps in adding meaningful decision-making to the shooting as opposed to just blasting away any chance you get. The game manages to be extremely stylish and substantive at the same time.

Some levels are more open-ended and others are built like a rail-shooter. While the full-range stages are of course impressive, the use of 3D with the lock-on to flip the camera from the back to the front to hit targets zipping past or coming up behind you is a really smart use of the new gen technology. it really makes me appreciate this era when 3D wasn't simply taken for granted, but as a new novelty to be experimented with, thus granting us gems like this which play with it in ways you rarely see even today.

That one time Grand Turismo developers got bored and decided to create a Mecha Rail-Shooter. You can boost, hover and throw your mech around by locking onto enemies. Shooting works like Panzer Dragoon and Rez where you scan the enemies on screen and unleash missiles. Controls work beautifully, however it would have been nice to have the ability to pull a roll maneuver—you can find yourself head-stand grinding the floor at times making for some confusing perspectives. There are nine levels to conquer each with it's own boss; clocking in at around an hour in length it's a brief game but the arcade roots of score chasing give you more than enough reason to come back. Omega Boost's sleek aesthetic and flowing animations damn near perfects the feeling of participating in space battles you'd see in your favorite anime, an easy recommendation for Rail-Shooter fans.

When your rail shooter mecha game starts and begins with 90s alt rock you know you are in for a badass experience. Really impressed with what they were able to pull off in terms of how smooth the gameplay is and how stylized all the different models were. Some of the fights were a little tricky as the controls felt a little floaty though this was probably because I was playing on an emulator. The latter half of the game also has some frustrating difficulty spikes that would have been a lot more annoying if I hadn't used save states. The biggest pull for me was the variety of awesome mech designs the game has that I was slobbering over throughout my playthrough. A badass game for badass mecha fans.

Incrivelmente interessante pra um gênero que eu não gosto. A habilidade de se movimentar, girar rapidamente para o inimigo e ficar parado no ar ao invés de estar sempre em trilhos tornam o jogo mais dinâmico e mais rico.

Ele consegue dar uma sensação de vôo livre em alguns momentos, apesar de ainda ter sua progressão em trilhos.

A trilha sonora também é excelente, e os valores de produção impressionantes. Há cenas em FMV com atores reais alterados por CGI misturados com efeitos práticos e figurino próprio que são de alta qualidade.

Não esperava me divertir tanto (enquanto durou).

This game is just really fucking cool. Probably my favorite looking game on psx, and it's got some really cool ideas for making a 3D shmup with a unique control scheme. Some bullshit moments with one hit kills and damage reflection, and if I didn't use save states to bypass the continue system it would have taken me much longer to figure out some of the bosses, but most of them were pretty fun once you understand the mechanics. Could see this being something that gets better with repeat playthroughs, but for the first time it was still very good.

Omega Boost is a 3D rail shooter akin to Panzer Dragoon, but this time in space and inside a mech. ( Look at who did the game. )

Maybe the game that uses most of the PSX capacity ? I mean it's really beautiful and the vfx are a sight to behold, check for yourself, you'll understand.

You want to feel cool ? Play this game. Fast paced gameplay with the Scan makes it so it's easier to follow targets in the 3D environments and really manage to capture the feeling of a space mech battle while nailing the theatrical aspect of these dogfights.

It's also really difficult, so good luck with this, as upgrades that makes the game easier are awarded with a good rank score.

The soundtrack is really something to hear, quite fitting but not what you would think of by seeing gameplay.

I recommend that you try it even if you don't finish all the levels, just to discover it.

( The last zone is PURE KINO )