GunGriffon: Allied Strike

"Allied Strike strikes out"

AWGS = Armored Walking Gun System

After reading several bad reviews of Gungriffon: Allied Strike, I was thoroughly prepared to be disappointed when I played the game. I'm a long time fan of the series and there was no way I was going to let the fourth game pass me by without at least giving it a try, reviews be damned. What were my impressions after playing the first few missions? For one, Allied Strike has some of the most killer sound effects I've ever heard in a video game. Right off the bat I was floored by the powerful punch of the guns and the deafening rumble of explosions. These sound effects are incredible, and I can't emphasize enough what a huge difference that makes in making you feel like you are living the war experience. It's obvious the sound design team put a lot of work into making the weapons sound real. They are also loud. You won't be turning the volume on your tv up to hear what is going on--you'll be turning it down to prevent the neighbors from calling the police about the gunfire they heard inside your house. The audio doesn't shine in all areas, however. The sound of your AWGS walking is kind of weak, and the voice acting is atrocious. So many Japanese developers are completely clueless when it comes to good voice acting.

The second thing that struck me is that the graphics are indeed uglier than a mud fence. This game does not look pretty. It looks even worse than Gungriffon Blaze, which was a launch title for the PS 2! In fact, the graphics are so unpleasing to the eye that I suspect this was an intentional move on the developer's part. This game is about war. Ugly, painful, chaotic war. These battlefields are places where men die and dreams are destroyed. A place where you just might hear a ghost's cry on the wind: "Woe my brother, fallen into dust are our hopes, our camaraderie, our dreams for a better future, and our chance of ever seeing home again. Our life reduced to a smoldering heap on the battlefield, to be entombed by rain, wind, sand and sun as time marches on without us. This is our record, these wisps of flame and smoke trailing off into a grey sky. A record not of what we were, but what we were meant to be." What I tried to convey in that little poetic interlude was a sense of desolation. And I think that perhaps this is also what the developers were trying to convey with the graphics in this game: a desolate existence where battles are fought over and over on pieces of ground that won't make a bit of difference to the fate of humanity in the long run. It's constant war. It's ugly, brutal, and just plain sad.

In regards to how the graphics actually look, well, everything is kind of the same color and there isn't a whole lot of detail to be seen. Think PS 2 launch title made my 3DO ( a developer gone belly-up which was notorious for making ugly, below average games), and you have a pretty good idea how it looks. Also, the animations for the AWGS' movements aren't the best. Weapons fire and explosion effects do look pretty good, however. The game has an interesting graphical option called DOF (depth of focus) that can be turned on or off. When turned on, objects and landscape in the distance are blurred out, with the camera only focusing on the immediate battlefield. Maybe this is meant to simulate the confusion and disorientation that accompanies combat, or maybe it's just a technique to make the frame rate smoother. The game doesn't look pretty either way, so it doesn't matter whether you have it on or off. Allied Strike does make at least one graphical improvement over Gungriffon Blaze: enemy AWGS and objects no longer just disappear when you destroy them. AWGS fall to the ground, take a few moments to say their final prayers to the war god, and then explode in a bright orange molten ball. Objects also have explosion and break-apart effects, without simply disappearing. So that's good.

The first thing any fan of the Gungriffon series should know about Allied Strike is that it is essentially a remake of the first two Gungriffon games on the Sega Saturn. All the old gameplay elements from Gungriffons 1 and 2 that were abandoned in Gungriffon Blaze are back. The radar (hallelujah!), the in-mission map, supply helicopters, and the wingman that Gungriffon 2 featured have all returned. Even the exact same "WEE BEE BEEP! WEE BEE BEEP!" electronic warning which indicates you are taking fire is back. Unfortunately, this also means the return of the punishing difficulty. This game is freakin' hard, even on the Easy setting, something which has probably kept the Gungriffon series from becoming more popular than it is. The first thing most players are going to do after playing the first couple missions of this game is search the internet for cheat codes. I've already done it, and I wasn't able to find a single one. Not a single damn one.

There are some new additions to the game that previous iterations have not featured. For example, you can now issue commands to your wingman via the black and white buttons. You can tell them to march off in a certain direction or to attack a certain enemy. Most times your wingman is useless because he either moves too slowly and thus can't keep pace with you, or he gets destroyed. Two-legged AWGS no longer have infinite dash capability. Dash power is consumed and slowly regenerates over time, just like jump power. Damage tracking for your AWGS is much more elaborate than the single health bar in the previous games. There are damage bars for your AWGS head, armor, body and legs. For every part of your AWGS that drops to zero on its damage bar, a critical function of your mech ceases to work. If your head receives too much damage, your radar will stop working. If it's your legs, you will no longer be able to use roller dash, and so on. I think it's pretty cool because it adds a touch of realism to the combat. No mech, no matter how skilled the pilot, is going to make it through these battles unscathed. Unfortunately, it also makes the combat that much more difficult, because you may find yourself facing a whole swarm of enemies without dash and jump capability.

But by far the most revolutionary element to be added to Allied Strike is the third-person viewpoint. That's right, you can now switch to a third-person view outside your AWGS at any time and play the game just like it was Mechassault. It's about damn time. Having played through all three previous games in the claustrophobic confines of the first-person view, I went to third-person with Allied Strike and never looked back. As difficult as this game is, I think a lot of people will choose to go this way. I'm all for the first-person view in a slower paced game, because it's more like you are actually piloting a mech, but the gameplay in the Gungriffon series is so frenetic and chaotic that the first-person view is really a crippling limitation. The only bad part about using the third-person view in Allied Strike is that sometimes your AWGS gets in the way when you try to target airborne enemies like choppers. Small price to pay for the much expanded view and higher situational awareness that you get from third-person.

The story . . . well, there is no story. That's right: absolutely no back story is given for who you are fighting and why you are fighting them. The mission briefings contain the same vague, confusing references to various nations and their activities that the first two games did, and I can't make sense out of any of it. I sit there and read a mission explanation two or three times and I don't have a clue what is going on. As long as you pay attention to the target areas marked on the map, the routes for enemy reinforcements, and the resupply positions for your chopper, you should be okay. This reinforces my point that the Gungriffon series is about war for the sake of war. There really is no logic as to who is fighting who, and for what reason. Humanity has devolved into a primal struggle for the earth's dwindling natural resources. The nations of the world have dissolved into larger, cross-continent alliances, and for some reason these alliances choose to fight all their battles in central and eastern Europe, in alien sounding places like "Uzbekistan" or "Awshibabwala". Why can't we have a battle in the good ol' US of A, or maybe France, or even Japan, since that is where the damn game was made? Who cares about liberating some ugly-ass Uzbekistanian ground (is that even a country?) from a Liberated Coalition of Federalist Republican Nationalistic Radicals who are running a pipeline to supply the forces of the 3rd Democratic Allied Division? Of course I'm being facetious, but that's how the game comes across. You don't know or care who is allied with whom, and you care even less about the vast cesspool of politics that drives the entire war situation. Either the writing for the entire series is extremely bad, or the makers of the Gungriffon games don't want you to care about the political structure behind this war. I'm opting for the latter. Just jump in, start shooting, and try not to blow up. It would help the series a lot, however, if the designers made us care about the outcomes of our battles and why we are fighting them by constructing a believable, understandable story that we can identify with.

Ammunition management is a big part of the gameplay. Oh, let me just come out and say it: the game doesn't give you crap for ammo. You cannot fire with wild abandon in this game, because your ammunition is very limited, especially for the more powerful weapons like the rocket pods and the ATMs. You do have supply choppers that restock you during the battle, but they show up all too infrequently and there is always the possibility of an enemy blowing your chopper out of the sky, or you being on the opposite side of the map when the chopper lands. This requires you to figure the chopper resupply points and times into your battle strategy, and to be prepared to defend the chopper should it come under attack. The machine gun is still the fall-back weapon if you completely run out of ammo for your other weapons, and there is still the danger of it overheating if you fire it too long. Like I said, classic Gungriffon gameplay. The problem is your ammo supply is even more limited than it was in the first two Gungriffon games. Prepare to completely run out of ammo frequently, and find yourself facing an army of enemy AWGS with nothing but your pee-shooter of a machine gun. It really is quite ridiculous, and if the first cheat code released for this game is NOT infinite ammunition, I will officially be very, very angry.

One thing the Gungriffon series has never been able to get away from is timed missions. Not only do they make the game harder than hell, they only give you so much time to complete your objectives. This ancient relic of the Japanese game making style should have been buried in a very deep hole a long, long time ago (along with non-aviation style control). Timed missions were for the days of old school (for you youngsters out there, I'm not talking five years ago. I'm talking fifteen to twenty years ago). There is absolutely no reason to be timing things anymore, unless it is a specific sequence set in a larger level. For example, the bad guy on the fourth floor of the building has just set a bomb, and you only have three minutes to defuse it. You are on the tenth floor. That kind of stuff is okay. It makes things exiting and gets your adrenaline pumping. But to give a player a set time limit to complete an entire level or mission is just ludicrous.

In conclusion, I can recommend Allied Strike only if you are a die hard fan of the Gungriffon series, if there is such a thing anymore. Allied Strike is a complete throwback to the first two games, and old school fans might appreciate that. Hell, they even tried to emulate the Sega Saturn's crappy graphics. I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if the difficulty level wasn't so high. For me, that is the biggest strike against it. Throw in the horrible graphics and the pittance you are given for ammunition, and not too many people are going to find a reason to play this game. It's a shame, because if any game series screams potential, it's Gungriffon. All it needed was that one amazing installment to make people take notice and appreciate what a great mech game it can be. Game Arts could have had a worthy challenger to the Mechassault series on their hands, but as it is, Allied Strike just . . . strikes out.

Graphics: 0 Without doubt the worst graphics you've ever seen on the Xbox console

Audio: 9 Incredible sound effects for weapons and explosions. Even the sound of your AWGS reloading is cool, but the sound of your mech walking is lame

Control: 8 Control is problem-free for the most part, but the mechs turn too slowly

Gameplay: 4 It's just too freakin' hard, and why the hell can't I have more ammo?

Story: There is none

Replayability: There are three difficulty levels and points are tallied at the end of every mission based on what kind of enemies you've destroyed and how many

Difficulty: Very high

Should you buy this game: Uh, no. Go buy Mechassault 2 and have a much better time.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/05