192: Bushido and Beamsabers

[Singularly Datarific]

They may initially appear similar to first- or third-person genre-based games with human avatars

Obviously he hasn't seen the ludicrously blegh-tastic "Mechassault".

Mecha games will not succeed in the west unless we get something that is worth playing.

The easiest mainstream debut imo would be a Mecha game that plays like a fps with destructible environments, various energy weapons and miniature cityscape battlefields.

Ah yes, the only way to make something new popular in the west is to revamp it so it's exactly the same as what's already popular in the west...

So instead of a diverse set of genres we get one amorphous muddy blur of a genre. I'd just love it if everything was sort of an RPG and sort of a shooter like Mass Effect or sort of an Adventure game and sort of a shooter like Bioshock.

I know, let's just make all games more like shooters!

/rolling eyes

Stop right now, get an old copy of Mechwarrior 2, and repent!
Well, I mean that it was in a league of its own and simply cannot be compared to any other game other than that of its own genre, so don't compare it to Halo (Which is inferior), but compare it to a combat simulator; It would be far more appropriate to compare Mechwarrior 2 to a Combat Flight sim than any shooter. The feel of controlling a 75-ton mech customized to your whims is incredible.

 

[Ollie Barder]

Obviously he hasn't seen the ludicrously blegh-tastic "Mechassault".

I have but I already covered that in regards to how FASA lifted a lot if not all of its mecha rulesets from Dougram et al.

Stop right now, get an old copy of Mechwarrior 2, and repent!
Well, I mean that it was in a league of its own and simply cannot be compared to any other game other than that of its own genre, so don't compare it to Halo (Which is inferior), but compare it to a combat simulator; It would be far more appropriate to compare Mechwarrior 2 to a Combat Flight sim than any shooter. The feel of controlling a 75-ton mech customized to your whims is incredible.

MechWarrior is still very much a third person shooter though, so the core mechanics are applicable. However, approach is based more around a simulator so there are more variables to take into account as a consequence.

Personally, I prefer Steel Battalion over MechWarrior as the mecha designs were created solely for that game rather than hacked up from pre-existing anime series (plus the peripheral for the game affords a far greater amount of control to the player).

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Obviously he hasn't seen the ludicrously blegh-tastic "Mechassault".

I have but I already covered that in regards to how FASA lifted a lot if not all of its mecha rulesets from Dougram et al.

Stop right now, get an old copy of Mechwarrior 2, and repent!
Well, I mean that it was in a league of its own and simply cannot be compared to any other game other than that of its own genre, so don't compare it to Halo (Which is inferior), but compare it to a combat simulator; It would be far more appropriate to compare Mechwarrior 2 to a Combat Flight sim than any shooter. The feel of controlling a 75-ton mech customized to your whims is incredible.

MechWarrior is still very much a third person shooter though, so the core mechanics are applicable. However, approach is based more around a simulator so there are more variables to take into account as a consequence.

Personally, I prefer Steel Battalion over MechWarrior as the mecha designs were created solely for that game rather than hacked up from pre-existing anime series (plus the peripheral for the game affords a far greater amount of control to the player).

That was for about 10 of them in Mechwarrior, and unfortunately, they were the best ones.
EDIT: Compare the stolen Warhammer:

To their Atlas:

And yes, it was a 3rd/1st person shooter, but the controls and systems were vastly different in how you operate the mechs.
I'd try Steel Battalion if I had $200 lying about, and it does look quite sweet.

 

[Ollie Barder]

That was for about 10 of them in Mechwarrior, and unfortunately, they were the best ones.

I actually didn't specify the designs themselves, though those were indeed copied, but more about the rulesets those designs gave rise to across the whole game.

FASA didn't just copy the designs - the copied how those designs mechanically worked from Dougram.

This is why there are no real Western mecha games, they all originate from Japanese intellectual property in one way or another.

And yes, it was a 3rd/1st person shooter, but the controls and systems were vastly different in how you operate the mechs.
I'd try Steel Battalion if I had $200 lying about, and it does look quite sweet.

Not really, Remote Control Dandy is very much a mecha game and in the third person but it's not bound by the core mechanics of a shooter, whereas MechWarrior's core mechanics are reliant on that. In the same way Armored Core is for example, though in From Software's series the remaining defining mechanics are obviously far more varied.

 

[kamuraki]

Personally, I'm convinced that the main reason the Japanese are so into robots is because; A. They really want sexy personal computer robots, like in Chobits. & B. They are desperate to make life-size working Gundams with which they can dominate the world... and/or space.