Mar 252011
Mar 072011
G Generation World is here and it’s indeed a fine G Generation game. It sports great graphics, very fluid animation and a gigantic roster to create your own group of overpowered units and wreck havoc through all Gundam timelines.
The game, however, is far from being perfect. Those coming from Wars may feel the lack of several details like machine introduction and cockpit cut-ins, as well as exploding animations. Several key characters and all grunt soldiers lack voices and there are no more tag lines spoken when a character is assigned at the Master Unit slot. A few featured series were relegated to just a few units and characters.
This can be due to the storage limitations for the PSP version. With the game being promoted as multi-platform, they couldn’t wield a better game for either of them. So those with the Wii version may feel a bit cheated with all the small details lost in comparison to its prequel, but in contrast the combat scenes feel a lot faster paced without those.
Graphic wise, no matter what version is played, they’re breathtaking, specially those from newcomer Unicorn. It’s important to note that there’s no difference between the Wii and PSP version on this matter, except for perhaps screen resolution and a few noticeable compression on FMVs for the portable device.
The gameplay remains much the same from its prequel, with a few additions:
- targets are marked when moving a unit, so to easily spot who we can attack
- smaller, simpler shaped battleships and unit launching from its center rather than catapults
- Generation Breaks: the renamed Wars Break brings in not only enemy reinforces but allies too
- Challenge Mission: a special condition that, alongside Generation Breaks, bring in a secret unit forces when the condition is triggered
- Custom Character: it’s possible to create a character with customizable pilot suit, voice and BGM
- automatic unit combination: the option is shown at the unit combination screen, where all possible combinations are made, so there’s no more need to go unit by unit to see if a combination is registered
- better hints for unit evolution and combination
On the sound aspect, some tunes feel a lot better, specially for Zeta, but most if not all series lost the change of background music when a character reaches Super One Hit mode. Wars had a lot of personal favorites of mine as Super One Hit mode only. World, on the other hand, lacks lots of those.
All in all, it’s quite a solid game for new players. Those with PSP and coming straight from Portable may be happy to see what they’ve been missing. Old time veterans might feel a bit cheated with the few new content, but the special treatment on Unicorn’s animations, the great graphics for both Wii and PSP and fun stages with lots of enemies to beat make up for it.
Mar 072011
A major update for G Generation Touch is available, and while it promises the cure of all problems and the addition of extra content at the shop, none of them is currently available for the rage of angry customers. A word of warning before updating is that your in-stage save data will be erased after upgrading, so it’s better to finish that stage before doing so.
There’s also reports that the game asks to repurchase the content, but for those who already paid the first time, it’s likely that it will only redownload without costing a buck. Hopefully, I mean.
I’ve updated to check out a few notable additions: better touch controls and extra content at a shop.
The better touch controls can be used by choosing the Touch Type B at the options screen. The only thing different I’ve noted so far is that you can move right away from touching the unit, instead of having to choose the move option, which is a good start. It can be confusing at first, but it’s manageable.
There’s also a somewhat confusing unit selection slider, used to scroll through the units on map. You can flick right or left to choose a unit, but it’s rather useless when attacking as it selects an allied unit instead of an enemy, and after choosing an enemy it still lists all enemy units instead of those in range. But as I said, it’s a good start.
The shop is still under construction, it seems. No matter the option you choose, be it Unit Blueprints, Characters, Tickets or Capsule Getter (whatever that is), they all stay at the forever rolling Haro screen with a “connecting to server” like message. There’s no cancel button, so if you get fed-up with ZZ’s theme you have to close the game and restart.
Another thing in the added feature list is Game Center integration. It’s essentially there for Achievements, however, it’s the least needed feature right now IMO.
So, as the shop remains unusable, our hope to access extra units like the G-3 and Prototype Gundams are still slim. We’ll have to wait for them to either fix what’s wrong with their server to see if it’s actually worth the wait, or just go back on playing G Generation World.