Assault Gunners HD Edition | PS4 Review
If you love futuristic, mech-based combat while traveling to other worlds, you’re going to want to go somewhere else. Assault Gunners HD Edition is an import from Marvelous, Inc., which released this little number on the Japanese PS Vita in 2012. However, this barely translates to the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 today.
The Assault Gunners story line is decent enough to start, but quickly becomes drawn out and and repetitive after a few missions. You are a mech pilot trying to defeat a phalanx of aliens hellbent on stopping Earth’s colonization and terra-forming efforts throughout the solar system. Although the missions do differ at time between straight up combat, taking control points, and even boss battles, for the most part combat is dull and effortless, even on its hardest difficulty level.
The environments are lackluster, and enemy AI is of little challenge. Although you can customize your mech with different primary and secondary weapons, as well as defensive capabilities and paint jobs, Marvelous’ attempts at being charming are minimal at best. Some of the weaponry was interesting, but figuring out controls or primary aspects of the game such as finding more ammunition were quite difficult. This difficulty was mostly due to all spoken dialogue from non-controllable characters having been in Japanese. Yes, you can change the language, but only to others of the Asian variety such as Chinese and Korean.
The primary concern here is that the game is out of its time. Six to ten years ago on the PS2, this could have been a decent seller. Even by means of modern mobile games, the depth and simplicity of Assault Gunners just doesn’t pan out. I really don’t want to be harsh, because if you want a simplistic, straight-forward shooter, this game could be for you. But it’s barren and lacking story-line as well as a torrid variety of enemies (yes there are about three types and they all look the same) leave me concerned to ever live in a world where this is a smash hit.
This review is based of of a PS4 review copy provided by MARVELOUS! and Uber Strategists for coverage purposes.
Assault Gunners: HD Edition
$9.99
Pros
- Anime aesthetic
- There are mechs
Cons
- Dull Action
- Boring Story
- PS1-caliber visuals
- Hardly any translation
