I've covered a fair few Simple Series games in the past, on the
Playstation, PS2 and PSP, but the Simple DS Series warrants a bit of an
extra introduction. Like all the other versions of the series, it's a
long string of budget games that tend to have fairly generic titles with
a few diamonds hidden in the rough. What's special about the Simple DS
Series though, is that there seems to be a higher level of technical
quality than you might expect from a budget series of games on the
original DS. You might expect a lot of cheap-looking touchscreen
minigame compilations, but there's a lot of polygon-heavy action games
with pretty high production values.
The Soukou Kihei Gunground is an entry into what I feel is a pretty
under-subscribed subgenre: military giant robot-themed action
platformers whose progenitor is (as far as I know) Assault Suits Leynos.
It has most of the common features: parts upgrading, a setting that
seems heavily inspired by Soukou Kihei Votoms (obviously), even the
missions have the same kinds of objectives and locations that other
games have.
There's stages where the player just has to make their way from left to
right, stages where every enemy has to be destroyed, stages where
certain items have to be defended or destroyed or collected. And they
take place in jungles, deserts, mountains, cities and secret bases.
Upgrading is pretty simple, with a shop selling new weapons and parts,
as well as healing items that can be used during play via the touch
screen. (The touchscreen's only use in this game is for changing weapons
and using items.) Menus are all in Japanese, but there's plenty of
numbers and other visual representation, so navigation won't be too big a
problem after you get used to things (and I'm assuming that most people
who regularly read this blog can at least recognise the katakana for
"save" and "load").
There's also ther option to change the colours of every indiviual part
of your mecha, but unfortunately the developers have gone with a
"realistic" look for the game, so no matter what colours the player
picks, their mecha will still look like an ugly greyish pile of boxes.
Most of the enemy mecha, at least, look like boldly coloured green or
orange piles of boxes. I assume the developers of this particular title
just had problems getting good 3D from the DS though, as all the
backgrounds are pretty nice looking pixel art, all colourful and
detailed.
The single player game is pretty good, and as I said, it's not a genre
with a lot of options, especially on handhelds, but the game also has a
pretty great multiplayer option. It actually has two multiplayer
options, but the other one's a bit disappointing. They both allow
download play with a single cartridge though, which is always nice.
Starting with the disappointment, there's the co-op mode. I was really
looking forward to this mode before playing it, teaming up with some
friends to smash enemy mecha sounded great, but unfortunately, the
missions are so trivially easy with multiple players, there's no fun to
be found here. The versus mode is a lot better though. It's pretty much
as you'd imagine: each player enters into a small stage and wages battle
until only one remains. Since all the available mecha are bipedal, it
doesn't have the variety that the similar versus mode found in the SNES
game Metal Warriors, but it does have the advantage of being on
handhelds, so each player has their own screen.
Yeah, The Soukou Kihei Gunground is a pretty good game. I wouldn't pay a
lot for it, but it's definitely worth a look if you happen across a
copy going cheap.
