Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit

"Watch out for that building, yeah and that one..and--Game Over."

It looked excellent on paper didn't From? The incorporation of sleek mech design, balanced nuances inspired from your AC series, throw in a relative plot and arcade mechanics and you got yourself an award winner. Hopefully, that's not an impression you were under, you're smarter than this FS, your previous work makes this evident, especially in the AC franchise. So, where did it all go wrong? Just about everywhere.

Graphics-7/10
The mechs look great, retaining this everlasting shine and polished surface, until they're greeted with skyscrapers at eight miles per hour, much less with heavy fire power. Particle effects have some pizazz to them which provokes some enjoyment when taking down your enemies. The graphical nature beyond the mechs takes a nose dive otherwise. The passing city of Oliver Port simply put, blows. It's uninspired due to the fact that your passing it at high speeds, regardless though, it should of been cared for, it would of been appreciated to some extent in conjunction with better gameplay that isn't so forcefully hectic and ridiculously frustrating; to simply gaze at the city structure and vast ocean.

Sound-4/10
Mediocre, bordering on horrid. Both music and the rock jargon is terrible. The effects can muddle now and then, for the most part though, it does the job, however insufficient they happen to be.

Story-3/10
It's most certainly not the reason anyone would or should be playing this game, unless an inexplicable story and dialogue which couldn't manage to be more deplorable is of your ilk, than by all means, indulge.

You will assume all five pilots and utilize all five mechs, probably not by choice, because 'choice' isn't much of an option in regard to staying with one mech, due to the fact that when damaging said mech, will prevent you from using it in the next chapter/level, governing you to use another person and their respective mech until the other is repaired, which is a process.

Once picking your mech, you pursue an enemy unit gone haywire, because that's what you do, your part of the Murakumo mech pursuit team. Kind of a conceptual notion reminiscent from the Plus escapee mission from AC. That's pretty much the extent of the story, with very mundane and forced plot twists, which is kind of hard to do when there's basically an exclusion of any plot to be found, really.

Gameplay-3/10
If anything, it's comparable to Pong, in the sense of the ball (your mech) being smashed, thrown, tossed and floored between the paddles which equate to the millions upon millions of buildings that fly by at high speed. This wouldn't of been a problem if the controls were adequate enough that would enable the mech to evade these threats with the least bit of proficiency. Instead, the main obstacle lies not between the mech and the enemy pursued, but rather, the damn buildings. Cheap shots by your opposition don't help when colliding into the structures either.

There is primary fire and secondary fire, boost and brake. Taking advantage of the latter controls (boost and brake) don't help much in the way of progressing to the next level to do same set of tedious deviations. The concept behind boost should be in bursts, not boosting until the charge or fuel deplete, which dramatically increases the already high rate of hitting the backdrop from 95% to 200%. Braking doesn't help either, not in the least, it doesn't halt the perpetual rush forward, rather, it slows your speed, from eight hundred mph to about 780 mph, just to give an example of difference. If anything, it's suggested to simply not touch the brake or boost, your going fast enough as it is and braking is a minuscule effect and actually contributes in damaging your mech up against, yup you guessed it, a building.

With all this frantic gameplay which relies more on dodging and somehow maneuvering the mech through the gauntlet of skyscraper hell, it's hard to concentrate on actually getting off a shot or two at the escapee, who will no doubt escape several hundred times before one strikes out and gets lucky enough to get close and blast them before they surpass the bounds.

Each mech has it's own weaponry, from missiles, blade waves, gatling gun, to a beam cannon. All have pretty interesting accommodated visuals, assuming you have the skill or more likely, the 'luck' to pull it off during the succesful evasion of the background. Some weapons however, are terribly inviable, such is the case with the beam cannon, which actually has a start up time. I don't think it would be in order to recite the apparent danger in using it. As some weapons have start up times, recovery times, others have horrible accuracy. Not only is this pernicious, but problematic in the sense of making most mechs useless, killing strategy, and therefore, sticking with one mech in general, the well rounded red mech.

That's about it, dive into a level, inhumanly try to evade the incoming structures and fire off a few shells when close enough to your enemy, hopefully killing them before they make it across the border. There really isn't anything else to comment on, much less a single aspect to slight praise, other than the noteworthy visual appeal of weaponry.

Replay Value-1/10
.....

Over All, fundamentally flawed at it's core, there really is no saving grace to this game, as any sense of enjoyment is completely overshadowed and then obliterated by the overbearing concept of being destroyed by your surroundings at all times, rather than something that actually possess AI. Very impermissible. Not recommended.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04