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[PC] [MAC] [AMIGA] Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

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[PC] [MAC] [AMIGA] Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Unread postby Siren » 11 Feb 2010 03:57

***
Genre: First Person Shooter
Released: September 30, 1998

Monolith is best known today for their fast paced over-the-top shooters. Since Blood a year earlier --their Wolfenstein 3D clone and first game-- not much has changed here. Shogo MAD would later be replicated and dipped in dye as Blood 2. (Leaving behind what made Shogo interesting, I must add.)

As for Shogo, shooting an enemy's limbs (There's no particular one, since the effect is at random.) gives you some health. When confronting 2 or more enemies, alternating between them is a great strategy. Shoot the
first, and as he winces in pain, shoot the other(s). When the first starts to recover, have at him again and repeat the process.

SPOILERS AHEAD!
Some bosses do not respond to you unless you cross a boundary. For example: The fight against Samantha in the "Bullet in the Head" stage can be won by literally standing in one spot. You fight this bitch 3 or 4 times throughout, and it becomes a recurring joke in the game. Sanjuro says, "Why won't you die!" or something to that effect. Uziel in "An Old Friend" starts shooting like a madman from the second the battle begins. Only one problem: he is hurting himself by firing at the ground in front of him with his big-ass gun. You could take the elevator up and face him on the platform, but he can kill himself if you stay still. [END SPOILERS]

The on-foot levels vary from a moving train (Later used in Blood 2, I believe.) to city slums, to highly secured facilities. The mecha levels have the coolest weapons. The "Spider" latches on to anything you can see, and destructs in heavenly flames, damaging anything caught in the blast. It is slow to execute. "Shredder" and "Bullgut" pack a wallop as well; the latter firing spread missiles, and the former a rapid beam --good for chewing up Fallen scum. The only notable on-foot weapon is the "Kato Grenade". This orb bounces off surfaces and disintegrates it's live target. (Including you and your allies.) Your MCA, or "mobile combat armor" can transform into a land craft. This is pretty useless. I did love to step on and shoot soldiers in my MCA; visa versa is a chore.

Other than some cool mech designs, the "Critical Hit!" mechanic, and some awe-inspiring guns, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is a generic game. You will fight the same basic guys from start to finish. (Character models in 2 colors? C'mon Monolith.) It really makes sense now.

Supervisor: "Hey Samson, how is F.E.A.R. coming along?"
Character Designer: "Oh, it's great. Since I can't draw for fuck, we are going to call them 'clones' in the game. Now I can go home early!!"
Supervisor: "That's nice. Well I'm headed back to the Philippines, so be sure to tell William to overwork himself with the A.I. before you leave. Looks like he enjoys his work, but tell him to do so regardless."

Though slightly less compelling than Half Life, it is still worth checking out for some short lived thrills-- if you can cope with the stupid design choices.


Note: Someone was making a multiplayer mod back in the day that put a group of OF players up against a controlled MCA. I don't know if that was released or not. I have not touched the multiplayer matches, but I doubt anyone is playing. lol.
Siren
 
Joined: 08 Feb 2010 10:08

Re: [PC] [MAC] [AMIGA OS] Shogo:Mobile Armor Division

Unread postby Marble » 11 Feb 2010 07:43

Here's what's wrong with this: most of it is just telling us what happens in the story without providing any criticisms, lacks any proper comparisons with games of the same genre and hardly even touches on the mechanics. For example;
Siren wrote:As for Shogo, shooting an enemy's limbs (There's no particular one, since the effect is at random.) gives you some health.

This is simply a statement until you give a reason why the addition of this mechanic is good/bad. If you changed it to, say, "Shooting an enemy's limbs (there's no particular one, since the effect is random) gives you some health. This is a bad mechanic because it rewards the player due to random chance instead of because the player shot accurately" then it becomes valuable (although my example is certainly not great writing).

I'm also unsure of what you mean in your sentence about shooting limbs. Do you randomly score limb shots, or is the limb that's effected by a limb shot random (for an example, shooting an enemy in the foot and scoring an arm shot)? I assumed the former for my example.
Siren wrote:The on-foot levels vary from a moving train (Later used in Blood 2, I believe.) to city slums, to highly secured facilities.

So? Does the game have a wide variety of terrains which in turn leads to a wide variety of strategy? Does the game have a strong visual aspect due to the variety of locations? Your criticisms are so non-existent that you've reduced me to guessing as to what your point is.

Then you suddenly jump to talking about which levels have the "coolest" weapons! You mention in the final sentence that the game contains "stupid design" choices yet in your entire post the only thing that you even display a hint of negativity towards is the character models and their colour palette. Shogo is less compelling than Half Life? Why? I could continue to go on but (I hope) you get what I'm saying. The whole thing is just a poorly structured collection of statements that contains hardly any criticisms. Maybe you can turn it into an okay review if you write about which of your many statements about the game made it better/worse and why.
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Unread postby Siren » 11 Feb 2010 14:41

Your criticism is much appreciated, Marble. I am ashamed of this review now.

I'm pulling an all-nighter playing this game on Hard setting, with a notepad and your advice in mind. The whole review must be re-written from scratch. I could not tell you any estimated date of completion, but I'll shift my focus to criticizing the game rather than telling the reader what's most obvious about it.

This thread is helping me tremendously as well:

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=3133
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Unread postby Siren » 18 Feb 2010 07:42

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is not a fun game, but one that requires a lot of patience and frustration. One might be intrigued by the robot anime style only to be sadly disappointed with the overall experience. Indeed, this game has an abundance of "robot vs. robot action", but also a game type in the shoes of a soldier. I can't say I like either one. All the levels surrounding the soldier feel exactly the same: Pop out of a corner and kill someone before they kill you. Sounds simple enough, right? Well it looks like Monolith wanted to take an already annoying trait of the genre and make it intolerable.

The "Critical Hit" mechanic is one of the worst ideas in videogames.
Here is how it works: If I shoot an enemy, there is a 50/50 chance I will receive health for doing so. This is no doubt a distraction from the cheap design of the A.I.. If you are within an enemy's field of vision, he will damage you without warning. No audio/visual cues to go by, no decent system to prevail. It limits the "expert Shogo player" to creep out of corners and catch them off guard. Anything less could fuck you over big time. I must mention that the enemies also get an advantage at random, though it's a little different: they can cause insane amounts of damage. Even at 100% health and armor I was astonished to die by a shotgun blast. Imagine my frustration as I started the stage over and over again, each time with no means of improvement.

So we have the boring 8-ball-in-the-corner-pocket strategy and the occasional relief of blowing up an explosive crate with enemies nearby. There are a few interesting weapons, such as the "Energy Grenade"-- a ball that can ricochet off of walls and into corridors to relieve you of the hassle. I found that it has a mind of it's own. There are times when it will get caught in a wall and freak out. I was pretty pissed when I got stuck in a fucking wall and received damage when I finally got out. (All in the middle of a firefight.)

As for the mech stages, there's not much to say here. You have 4 different mechs to choose from at different points in the game, and they all feel the same; despite what that automated voice will tell you during the first selection. I did like a particular wide open level towards the beginning. There is a fortress with about 5 enemies on top of the wall and many on the ground. They are suited with rocket launchers and "Spiders": a small bomb that coils around an enemy and destructs into flames. Getting out alive depends on the hovercraft you can transform into. It's much faster than it's previous form, so to compensate you cannot shoot or change weapons. This saved my hide when a spider latched on to the ground behind me with a second before exploding. (That was the only time I found the vehicle helpful.)
Hopefully Shogo 2 will ditch criticals and add more situations like this one. I died at least 20 times here and I'll never know if it was my fault or not.

The player's robots look very good considering the ugly shooters that came out the same year. (Turok 2: Seeds of Evil and Trespasser, I am looking at you.) Unfortunately, bad guys look grooooady. If generic-looking mech and soldier designs are your bag, then you will love this game. After the 8th stage you will no longer encounter new enemies, but I should have stopped playing anyway with the slew of other problems weighing it down. Could I list them all? Yeah, but that would shave 5 years off of the both of us.

At the end of the day, Shogo is a sub-par game with no reason to see what happens next. If you are looking to torrent some classics, please do yourself a favor and fire up Tribes already. This game is best left a bad memory in time.

**
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Joined: 08 Feb 2010 10:08

Unread postby Marble » 10 Mar 2010 01:56

Okay, apologies for taking so long to reply...
Siren wrote:Your criticism is much appreciated, Marble.

No problems.
Siren wrote:I'm pulling an all-nighter playing this game on Hard setting, with a notepad and your advice in mind.

I know you've probably already done it, but I wouldn't recommend playing the game while taking notes. While I've never done it before, I've no doubt it would make the game less fun. Mainly because if something that made the game better/worse isn't stuck in your head after you're done with the game, then there's no way it's significant to bother putting into a review.

Just play the damn game until you’re done with it and project your thoughts onto a word document and then maybe refine them a bit.

Anyway, this review suffers from the same problems as your last (although not as much): your claims aren't really backed up.
Siren wrote:Indeed, this game has an abundance of "robot vs. robot action", but also a game type in the shoes of a soldier.

I assume you're trying to explain the games' genre, but this really doesn't say anything about the game. Well, besides maybe what kind of characters you control. I mean, Contra: The Hardcorps could also be described as a game with "robot vs. robot action, but also a game type in the shoes of a solider" and that game is nothing like Shogo.
Siren wrote:It limits the "expert Shogo player" to creep out of corners and catch them off guard. Anything less could fuck you over big time... [I'm skipping the next sentence] Even at 100% health and armor I was astonished to die by a shotgun blast. Imagine my frustration as I started the stage over and over again, each time with no means of improvement.

So if you actually ended up applying that strategy throughout the game, you need to explain why exactly. Are all the levels in the game a collection of thin corridors or something? The sentence about the one shot kill is also useless until it's more specific. For example, if you got shot in the head from point blank I think it would be more retarded if you didn't die. If you’re not improving it doesn’t necessarily say anything about the game’s design, you could just suck at the game for all the reader knows. If there’s something that's causing you to die from no fault of your own then tell us what it is. (I just looked at wikipedia and it appears the player can receive critical hits too. This would be a justification for your frustration, but I would have no way of knowing this from your review.)
Siren wrote:At the end of the day, Shogo is a sub-par game with no reason to see what happens next. If you are looking to torrent some classics, please do yourself a favor and fire up Tribes already. This game is best left a bad memory in time.

You are doing EXACTLY what you did in the first go of the review: not mentioning a game for the entire review and then blasting out with "it's not as good as ____" in the last paragraph without explaining anything about the game or why Shogo isn't as good as it. It's nonsensical.
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Unread postby Siren » 10 Mar 2010 15:42

I assume you're trying to explain the games' genre, but this really doesn't say anything about the game.


Embarrassing mistake on my part. Perhaps it would have made more sense if I said "It is a straight-up FPS with two distinctive modes. They are characterized by different weapons. (On foot levels have mostly standard firearms, while your mobile suit's arsenal is more explosion based.) The latter is called for because the enemies in that mode take longer to die, so using the guns from "soldier" mode would have been suicide. " ?

...if you got shot in the head from point blank I think it would be more retarded if you didn't die.


I'm almost certain that range had nothing to do with it. I could check again, but I can't stand the thought of going back to this game.

Are all the levels in the game a collection of thin corridors or something?


Does it matter? With an involved battle system those thin corridors could have a different purpose. The game lacks that, so we are left with walls that are only good for cover. Rest assured, if there was more to the level design I would not have left it at "Pop out of a corner and kill someone before they kill you".

I just looked at wikipedia and it appears the player can receive critical hits too. This would be a justification for your frustration, but I would have no way of knowing this from your review.


I have in fact mentioned this in the one sentence you left out of the quote.
I think I might have phrased it strangely. Sorry if I did.

It looks like my inexperience with reviewing games is coupled with my inexperience with the genre; but still, it doesn't take a genius to realize that this is the same game Goldeneye was, Half Life was, Turok and so on.
In fact, my review is boring no thanks to the boring game of a boring genre I was reviewing. For that reason I think I'll review a game I love next time. Thanks for taking the time to help me realize this.

Also,
Just play the damn game until you’re done with it and project your thoughts onto a word document and then maybe refine them a bit.


I did this the first two attempts. (Yes I did write 4 reviews of the same game for practice. Never again. lol.)
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Unread postby Siren » 10 Mar 2010 17:29

"Energy Grenade"-- a ball that can ricochet off of walls and into corridors to relieve you of the hassle.


I really should have included this in the review, but this is one of the things that is not really useful, but rather helpful to the player in his progress. In other words it makes things suck less, but if left out of the game it would hardly make a difference. Every plus to this game falls into this category. That's how bad the game is.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Mar 2010 19:37

I counted five instances in this thread where Siren failed to separate his paragraphs appropriately with a space, so, in line with forum regulations, I banned him.

As for the review, I skimmed through it and, beyond whatever problems Marble highlighted, it is plain that Siren knows next to nothing about FPSes. Moreover this:

Siren wrote:In fact, my review is boring no thanks to the boring game of a boring genre I was reviewing.


Is simply laughable.

Your review is boring because you don't know what you are talking about, have poor analytical skills and are a bad writer. The game has nothing to do with it.
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