Nine months have passed since Zeon forces invaded the Earth. At the brink of annihilation, the Earth Federation Forces are mobilizing to launch a massive counter assault against the occupying forces. Now, it is time to choose your side.
That was the introduction to Mobile Suit Gundam: Target In Sight, for a PS3 launch game it sounds promising doesn’t it ? well prepare to be disappointed, because unfortunately this game fails to deliver in many ways.
First of all, you would be forgiven for believing that this game belonged to the PS2, as graphically it is nothing really groundbreaking, the frame rate is very poor and all of this combined just doesn’t make for a very good game but we will come back to this later.
The point of the game is to choose a side from the two factions at war and lead them to victory, you can choose between The Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon, both factions have the power of the mechanised suits to help them win the battle.
There two modes in which to play the game, either in single player mode or in multiplayer, unfortunately the multiplayer mode is very disappointing, the split screen that represents this mode just doesn’t work due to the slow frame rate, adding to that before you can even play you need to unlock all the suits from the single player game and to make matters worse there is no online play, which really is a major blow and makes me think that this game was destined for the PS2 until someone thought at the last minute "hey let’s make this a PS3 game and charge £10 more".
The single-player mode at least feels like it has been thought about, as previously stated you can play as either the Earth Federation force or the Zeon force, however whatever side you choose you will find you’ll encounter many of the same battles, it does feel unique though since you will be fighting from different sides.
One of the good things about Gundam is the campaign structure, each day you accept which missions you would like to do, there are time limits on each mission though so if you choose not to accept a particular mission it will eventually expire meaning that you will not be able to choose it anymore. As days pass, your pilot will recover from the days injuries and any damage to your mech’s will be repaired and if you should choose too, you can modifiy to make them stronger (although this take longer than a day to complete). You reach the end of the campaign on 31st of December or when you complete the final battle, so for all the negatives about this game, this is definitely the one thing that would make it remotely playable.
When you complete a mission you are given a rank, this is based on the amount of enemies you destroyed, the time taken and what health you have remaining, you are also rewarded points which you can use to upgrade your current crop of Mobile Suits or buy completely new ones, however the upgrade system is fairly basic, meaning you will not really be able to customise your mech to make it truly unique.
Each of your mobile suits are also supplied with a jet pack, this enables you to move around by quickly flying through the air, I personally liked this feature and though it was a good way to dodge attacks and unlike the rest of the game it doesn’t feel like a tacked on after thought, you also have plenty of weapons at your disposal which you can get to by using the Square and R1 buttons, these range from machine guns to missile launchers and the best way to beat your enemies using these is by pressing the L1 button which enables you to lock on, meaning the camera will stay still while you take your enemy out.
The are roughly 25 missions for each of the two factions, which is just as well really because the controls take some getting used to and there is no training mode to ease you in, this is a shame because the game could really have done with one. Each mission is set in quite bland environments like deserts and mountains and this really doesn’t do the game any favours, the backgrounds are surprisingly unspectacular with a lack of real colour or texture on display, add that to the fact that when your robots move the frame rate goes as slow as a snail with a lead weight attached to it and you can see you have a problem as far as the graphics are concerned.
Sound wise the game doesn’t fare much better as there is a complete lack of atmosphere to the whole thing, the weapons just don’t sound realistic and the movement of the mech’s just make you wonder if anyone was actually paying attention when they were developing this part of the game, completely disappointing.
This is the first PS3 game we have reviewed and as you can tell we are not really that impressed, it seems a shame when developers set out to make a game which has potential that it can turn out like this, most of it just feels like an after thought and the only thing that makes it remotely interesting is the campaign mode, unless you really must have a robot game for your PS3 now then avoid this at all costs.
