Since Bandai Namco announced the Gundam Extreme Versus games for the arcade many wondered when they would hit console and then make it to the West. Sadly, Bandai Namco’s approach to Gundam in the West has always been a disappointing one. Not understanding the host work at all it seems, they botch releases of these games and Gundam Extreme Versus Force is another in this long line of nonsense.
Now before I get into all this, Gundam Extreme Versus Force is actually a good little game but it’s not really a proper mainline Gundam Extreme Versus title. It does a lot of things very differently and while they work, the new mechanics only make sense if you are familiar with the previous games in the series.
Anyway, back to Bandai Namco and Gundam.
In a nutshell, Bandai Namco in the West has a habit of releasing the worst Gundam games out there but leaving a lot of the good or even great ones in Japan. Not only that, the few Gundam games they do release often get the marketing completely and tragically wrong.
Much of this is down to the anime not being readily available in the West and this in turn means people responsible for releasing this series abroad don’t really know anything about it.
So when Gundam Extreme Versus came out instead of releasing it abroad, Bandai Namco did something really weird.
Realizing that the game was probably good they instead got the original developer Byking to make an all-new game with the same mechanics but minus any Gundam content.
Cue Rise of Incarnates for PC, which was both awful and a monumental failure. This is because mecha game mechanics aren’t something you can often lift from one game type to another.
Mecha are abstract, they can’t exist. However, they have their own internally coherent rule set. This is something that the Gundam Extreme Versus games reference and why Rise of Incarnates failed due to their absence.
Now we’ve come to Gundam Extreme Versus Force and Bandai Namco has realized that they should probably start to release these games abroad but again they’ve picked the wrong game to do that, as Force will be the first game in the series released to Western audiences.
Unlike the other games in the series, Force is focused around an extended singleplayer campaign. It’s good too, as the emphasis is on commanding squads of mobile suits to take various points on a map.
Think of it then as a conquest mode, where each team has a battleship as a base and the objective is to capture spawn points in order to reach the enemy’s ship and destroy it.
The spawn points also create grunts affiliated with whatever team that has acquired it, a bit like a multiplayer online battle arena game. So capturing these points is key in ultimately being victorious.
There are a lot of missions and the setup does vary quite a lot in terms of pacing and scripting. You also have one on one matches with the intent being to unlock the enemy mobile suit you face off against.
In terms of the controls and handling, Force is similar to the mainline games in the series but with a few exceptions.
Despite the game being called “Extreme”, there is no longer an EX gauge anymore. This was switch up mechanic that leveraged the series’ updated approach to combat.
Specifically, in the older Gundam Versus games you could orbit around an enemy. So close combat was all about looking for an opening and taking it. If the enemy made a mistake you had them dead to rights.
In the Extreme Versus games, this all changed.
While you still had the same orbiting setup up close, you could also cancel out of a move. In doing so you’d see a rainbow hued blur when done correctly. It also importantly used a chunk of your boost gauge to execute.
This Rainbow Cancel meant that unlike the older games you could never know if you had the enemy dead to rights. Sure, they could have made a mistake but exploiting that could be risky. As if they had any boost left they could Rainbow Cancel out of the way and attack you instead.
The EX gauge was another layer on top of this. Once sufficiently full you could choose to initiate it and in doing so it would refill your boost gauge and give you a big bump in mobility.
So if you were facing certain destruction and were out of boost, you could use your EX gauge to get back into the fight.
This change in core mechanics elevated these games from being plain fun to a huge arcade multiplayer phenomenon across Japan.
Now Force retains the Rainbow Cancel but now that the EX gauge is gone, the game feels limited. The replacement to this is now a variety of new Force commands and they emphasize the squad based nature of the game.
So if your team is getting hammered you can use a Force command to replenish their health or give them an attack boost. You can even use your battleship to unleash an attack.
The problem here is that when you are in the thick of combat yourself, the lack of the EX gauge setup makes the game feel limited. This is especially noticeable in the one on one matches and also in the updated Free Battle mode.
This is another thing; the original release lacked a Free Battle mode and considering the multiplayer heritage of the series that didn’t go down so well with fans. Thankfully, Bandai Namco patched this back in and as such the game is a lot better for its eventual inclusion.
Admittedly, Force is fun if you realize the game isn’t all about action but has a good weight of strategy to it as well. However, this game only really works in the context of the others in the Extreme Versus series.
As an introduction to what made Gundam Extreme Versus games so amazing, Force is definitely an ill suited ambassador.
Force is still a good game though and I poured a lot of time into it and like the old PSP ports of the Gundam Versus games, I had no issue with it being on the Vita. Though to be fair those older games at least retained the series’ versus core.
So as a companion game to the mainline Gundam Extreme Versus series and as a game you can dip in and out of on the move, Force is great. However, as a standalone game it may leave many confused as to why certain mechanics play out the way they do.
The fix here would be to have Bandai Namco release the prior Gundam Extreme Versus PS3 ports in the West and give Force at least some gaming context. Though after Rise of Incarnates I am not expecting anything intelligent on their part.
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Developer: Bandai Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Released: December 23rd 2015 (Japan)
Price: 6800 yen
Score: 7/10
I played the game for around 13 hours finishing all the missions and purchased it with my own money.
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