The covid pandemic affected us all in different ways. For me, it lead to me importing a 2016 Gundam game and obsessing over it for the past week.
Before the pandemic, I casually knew of Gundam though cultural osmosis, but just the most basic information... like they are mechs, not robots. There was a show on Toonami that I watched a few episodes of. I had a Gunpla kit (I don't know they were called "Gunpla") from 10 years ago that I don't remember buying and barely remember building. And Vinny liked them. And that was it.
In March of 2020, I was given the gift of free time that felt like it would only last a few weeks, so I went on Amazon to look for something to occupy my time, perhaps a puzzle. I don't know how I ended up on the page (could it be FATE?), but I found the coolest looking Gundam model kit and purchased it.
When the 1/100 Full Mechanics Barbatos Lupus arrived, I tore into it. Building something was a way to bury my anxiety and fears for the uncertain future and concentrate on this thing made of tiny intricate parts that demanded my attention. When it was built, it wasn't finished. It needed to be painted, weathered, distressed. It needed to look battle worn. It needed my continued attention as a distraction.
So I ordered paints.
And tools.
And another kit.
It was during the building of the second kit that it was certain that my free time was going to last longer than a few weeks. I then decided to actually learn about what I had built and was building. That began my slow decent into Gundam lore, which for those of you who don't know is vast and segmented and all over the fucking place. There are different timelines and universes, and even shows about kids who build models and then use them to fight each other in a virtual arena. There's psycho frames and Minovsky particles. Annoying psychic green haired girls with daddy issues and a lot of dropping asteroids onto habitable places. There's children soldiers and cool ways for people to get around in zero gravity. And there's approximately 156,000 different mech designs, by my count.
After year and a half of building kits (up to 11 now), and watching as much Gundam anime as I could, I was now fully a Gundam fan. And I thought to myself, I wonder if there are any good Gundam video games? After some searching, the answer was generally no, but with a few exceptions. One of those was Gundam Breaker 3, which was never released in the States. I watched some videos on it, and it looked to be a very average Dynasty Warriors type game. I wasn't about to jump through hoops to import a 2016 game, so I forgot about it.
Until last week when I was searching for more kits to feed my soul that I found the game with all dlc and English subtitles for sale on Amazon. Impulsively, I bought it. And the rest is a blur.
Now let me say this right off the bat: to the average person, this game is not great. It has an annoying story mode that kind of resembles the Gunpla building anime I mentioned earlier. The graphics are mediocre, the sound and music is uninspired, and the game play is repetitive.
But none of that matters because it's awesome.
You start as small under powered mech in a level where you fight a bunch of other mechs, and smash parts off of them. After that mission is done, the real game begins. And that game is all about taking those stolen parts and making your own customized mech.
You can build it however you want, mixing and matching parts, painting it whatever color, whatever material property, distressing it, putting stickers on it and eventually unlocking additional parts that serve as cosmetics that are also actually usable in battle. And the way you build it affects how it plays in combat. You can build big tanky mechs that fight with their hands, or nimble mechs with dual sabers and spin attacks. You can customize the abilities it has, unlocking new ones as you play. Oh and you can name it and pose it and save that picture of it as the image that comes up when you select it or win a mission which is dumb but why do I spend time doing it anyway?
It's Dynasty Warriors, but with a little bit of Diablo and sometimes light Devel May Cry aerial combos?!
The loop is battle though ugly stages against waves of other kits, smash the fuck out of them, level parts, get new parts, get stronger or completely rebuild a new mech over the span of an hour and oh my god why is it suddenly 2 am?
But the coolest part for me, who crammed 40 years of Gundam knowledge into 15 months is seeing the incredible variety of Gundam and Mobile Suits (I learned there is a difference!) through out the various series show up during the battles. And smashing them apart to get their pieces to create them to play as or making something new from their parts. When my Barbatos kit showed up in the middle of a stage, I just might have yelled "OH SHIT" in front of my kids. I had to collect it's parts and build it in the game. I'm obsessed in a way that I very rarely get with games.
In no way do I recommend this game, unless you are me. Which I hope you're not because that would be very awkward for my family. But every once in a while there are games that don't have the highest budget, ray tracing, haptic triggers, the best game play, are on Gamepass or even the right region. They are more impactful than the latest and greatest console games because they come to you in a moment in your life when you are ready for it. If I would have been handed this game two years ago, I would have stopped playing after an hour.
But now? It's one of the best games I've ever played, even though it's totally not.
So here's to Personal Mediocre Yet Amazing Games. I would love to hear about yours.
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