Shin Senki Van-Gale - The War of Neo-Century (Playstation)

 I was attracted to this game not only because it was a Playstation fighting game I haven't seen anyone talk about before, and also because it seemed to be an aerial, projectile-focussed fighting game, like the Psychic Force games. It's not really much like Psychic Force, though. I'd say it's more like a cross between Bastard! Ankoku no Hakaishin and Senko no Ronde.

 

This is an assumption based entirely on the game's low budget-looking intro FMV and the fact that both the developer and the publisher seem to have only released a few games each, all in a window of a few years in the late nineties, but it does feel like it's a bit of an enthusiast's project. It's undeniable what the aim of the game was: to recreate one-on-one mecha battles, specifically in the style of those seen in the Gundam franchise. There's lots of zooming around, shooting and dodging laser fire, ruching in close to attack with beam sabers, and defending with beam shields.

 

It's also heavily influenced by Gundam aesthetically: as well as the robots looking like Gundam designs (one of them looks almost exactly lke The O, for example), the stages are straight out of that franchise, too. There's space, with the Earth in the background, a stage where the two combatants are burning up on entry into the atmosphere, a big cylindrical space colony, and so on. One bizarre detail is that you can set a time limit in the options screen, but it only seems to apply on the re-entry stage.

 

Unfortunately, though the game looks and sounds great, it doesn't play so great. It's not painful to play or anthing, but it's just not particularly enjoyable, either. I think a big problem stems from something that Psychic Force has that Van-Gale doesn't. In Psychic Force, there's an invisible line connecting the two characters; their positions and how the directions work for them are always in relation to their opponent, and more importantly, projectiles always fire directly at the opponent, and melee attacks always connect when the fighters are within range and the defender hasn't blocked or dodged.

 

What this results in is really long fights where two robots shoot at each other, only occasionally doing damage. Even rushing in to melee attack isn't great, because melee attacks only seem to actually trigger sometimes, and when it does happen, it usually just awkwardly whiffs. Sometimes a little "LOCK ON" crosshair thing appears over your opponent, though it doesn't seem to actually do anything. Attacks that you're supposed to aim just fire straight ahead whether the crosshair is there or not, and homing attacks kind of vaguely home in on the opponent whether it's there or not. I don't know if it's just an aesthetic touch or it does something that I haven't figured out, or even if it's supposed to do something, but some kind of programming error prevents that.

 

Like I said earlier, Van-Gale isn't a terrible game, but it's also not a good one. If you're curious about it, you might as well take a look, just don't spend a lot of money on it.