Jaywa's Full Review: Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes for Dr...
Gundam: Rise From The Ashes Sidestory 0079 is based on the Japanese Animé, Gundam, which aired in 1978. In Gundam, battles are fought with units described as Mobile Suits. Gundams are simply much more powerful versions of other mobile suits. These suits are in a way very large and deadly robots piloted by a human.
Rise From The Ashes Sidestory 0079 is the first video game for the Sega Dreamcast based on the Gundam series. However, one hypocritical fact about the game is that you aren't able to pilot a Gundam suit, but only a normal, weaker mobile suit. Irregardless of this blemish, this game has a great game concept, beautiful graphics, a thorough and complex(but good) storyline, and half decent gameplay.
Storyline
The date is January, UC 0079. The UC stands for Universal Colony. The space colony Side 3 declare themselves the Duchy of Zeon and wants independence from the Earth Federation government.
An invasion by the Zeon forces goes awry and the the invasion drop goes bad. The drop falls onto Sidney, Australia and decimates it; the city becomes nothing more than a bay. The Zeon army then invades Earth and with blitzkreig tactics, occupy two thirds of the Earth.
11 months later, enter Operation Odessa. Odessa is a counteroffensive launched in Europe. Odessa has such grand success, they send the unit to Australia to continue their successful missions.
Overall, the storyline gets a 9/10 because of its uniqueness.
Gameplay
Very unfortunately for this game, it is only one player and only has one game mode. The game mode only has you playing level by level, trying to complete each mission against Zeon forces successfully. Level in, level out, your only mission is to seek and destroy; it is never different, and that is a major strike against the game. I would have loved to see a multiplayer battle mode on this game.
One amazing feature I have never seen in a game before is the ability to have complete control of the game. What I means by this is that you have back-up forces watching your back, and you control them! You have friends in mobile suits, codenamed Fang 2 and Fang 3. You are Fang 1. You are in total command of what you want your unit to accomplish. If you want Fang 2 to engage the enemy, so be it. Send Fang 3 to go search out an uncharted area if you want. Also amazing, when Fangs 2 and 3 go attack someone, they actually do it. Unlike in other games where you have friends who attack the enemy, they do no harm to it, and you are left to defeat the villain on your own. But not in this game, Fang 2 and 3 actually destroy enemy mobile suits.
Disgustingly, there are only nine levels in this game. Nine! To top that off, the levels range from four minutes to 25 minutes to complete. Each level is the same thing too. You go around and try to find and blow up enemy mobile suits. Every couple of levels you get to encounter a much larger enemy, or boss to defeat. My brother beat this game in a mere hour and 50 minutes.
Another neat feature that supports the fact that you have full control of the game is in the ability to choose from two different mobile suits, different shields for the suit, and different guns; not only for Fang 1, but also Fang 2 and 3. This is a nice addition to the game. Mobile suits are equipped with hand grenades, Volcan guns(guns mounted on the mobile suit's head), a cannon, and a beam sword for close combat.
The game's controls are a little tough to learn. This is mainly because you have to control the aim with the analog stick(a mini-joystick) and control your running with the control pad. Aiming is pretty hard. Luckily, you have an auto aim with the touch of a button. However, all the controls take getting used to.
Overall, the gameplay gets a 7/10.
Graphics
The game's graphics are quite beautiful. I never experienced any fog, slowdown due to heavy action and fighting scenes, or any pop-up. The game always ran very fluidly and the animation was very smooth. The mobile suits are drawn very nicely. The first person view seems quite real, as when your mobile suit runs, your view becomes bouncy. Also, the view is as if you are inside the cockpit, so you see all the controls of the suit.
The scenematic scenes are gorgeous. They always show-off the beauty of the 3D worlds and the wonderfully drawn mobile suits. I love the fluidity of planes dropping cargo and mobile suits attacking one another.
The graphics get an impressive 9/10.
Overall
Overall, I enjoyed this game, even though it was pretty short. It is decent, but not tremendously great. I really enjoyed the great game concept, storyline, and graphics. The gameplay left something to be desired however. In the end, it gets an 8/10.
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