Gundam Vs. Gundam Next Plus: Robots are still awesome

Giant Robots, Sign Me Up!

As an ardent child at heart, I still retain some fondness for certain elements of my childhood.  These vary from ninjas, samurai, Batman, and bitching guitar solos to the whole grail for my gaming career as a child.  Of course, I’m talking about giant robots.  Now, I won’t claim I’m some anime slurping nerd, I’m more of a comic book fella.  But I’ve always had a certain affinity for their brightly colored robots and the multiple explosions.  Now, at the ripe age of twelve, I was exposed to Gundam Wing, a series that is pretty much just Sailor Moon with giant robots and a lot more angst to go around.

As bitching as they come.

 

When I picked up my PSP this past week, you can only imagine my surprise when I found out that Capcom, the guys behind the amazing Sengoku Basara and Resident Evil, had released a combat game based around the Gundam franchise as a whole.  Gundam Vs. Gundam Next Plus is a portable iteration of the popular arcade series that originated with the Naomi hardware, and it’s a great way to kill time in bursts. 

Holy Shit, Look at the Colors…Ooooh, Pretty.

GvGNP is a dream to look at on the PSP, having a silky smooth 60 FPS and still maintaining a hectic amount of action on the screen at any point in time.  Now, I can tell you maybe who five or six of these giant robots are, but I don’t honestly care.  I adore just how ludicrous the concept is though, they just throw all these giant robots in a pot and make them fight.  Why?  Have you been reading this entry closely?  It doesn’t really matter why, it’s just fucking cool.

Apologies for taking the image, but look at how fucking colorful this robot is.

GVGNP is a technicolor wet dream of gigantic proportions, it’s well suited for play in bursts, and it has machine gun wielding robots squaring off against robots that kung fu each other.  Awesomely stupid concept, and it reads like my failed fan fiction depicting Bruce Lee and Indiana Jones fighting the Cold War in 1950s Moscow.  For the hardcore nerds out there, I can surely agree that there’s probably some greater amount of plot at play here, but I honestly can’t say I care to find out.  The game is fun, I don’t need a story, I’ll play Planescape for that sort of shit.  Or Fallout, or any of the other fantastically smart PC games from the 1990s and early 2000s. 

I have no clue what’s happening, but I can assure you, epicness is taking place

GvGNP controls fantastically, never once feeling like a floaty mess.  This is one of the huge complaints I have to raise against the Armored Core franchise.  Despite the fact that it seems like Japanese Mechwarrior, it just controls like absolute shit, and I cannot stand the fact that building my dream Batman mech is far from being accomplished. 

Holy shit, awesome, thanks Mecha-Master on Deviantart, you were the first result up.

So, what it boils down to is this is a game well worth importing.  Give it a shot, play the fuck out of it, enjoy it.  It can be picked up here, here, and here.  Comment, follow, bug the ever living hell out of me.  I really would appreciate someone with a pulse to give me a little feedback.  See ya tomorrow.