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Van-Gale ~The War of Neo-Century~
  PS1FightingJ  
  opened by paleface at 02:50:33 09/01/03  
  last modified by paleface at 12:25:50 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PS1; cat=Fighting; reg=JPN]
           
Rather disappointing in a mold similar to Super Robot Shooting (entry 278): you've got the big robots, the shooting, and space, but somehow it just isn't very fun to play. This one plays more like a fighting game than a shooting game--sort of like Zone of the Enders, except one-on-one against a specific opponent in essentially infinite space with a skybox around it, ala Monkey Ball.
 
The problem is, Zone of the Enders wouldn't be that much fun if it was just one-on-one all the time, especially if you didn't really have a hand-to-hand attack. I think the AI has hit me with one once, which is odd, because all I can find are your basic laser attack, missle attack, and then "super" glowy attacks that you can do from time to time by pressing "shield" and an attack button, though I don't see any indication as to when you can do them. You can also hold R1 to dash, and if you do it without pressing a direction you just jet at your opponent.
 
They, of course, will shoot you when you do that. In fact they'll pretty much shoot you all the time since they seem to be able to dodge and aim simultaneously while you, alack, cannot. Nope, 'cause to aim you've to to position your third-person crosshair over the enemy with the d-pad, while to dodge you've got to move your d-pad toward the side of the screen. So what happens is that you dodge, then stop and aim, then find that you have to dodge again because the enemy is shooting at you already. This isn't particularly fun and it goes on for a long time because the enemy dodges too, so you're both just dodging back and forth at long range, not really able to hit each other unless you also try shooting too much, in which case the person trying to shoot too much gets hit. You can play two player as well, apparently, but I can't say why you'd really want to take the time.
 
I searched this out because it says it was developed by aroma, the team behind the uber-kitschy Geppy-X (entry 1), but you only have the merest hints of anime kitsch here in the nice 2D character portraits. The graphics look okay and move okay but are almost completely devoid of any particularly interesting effect--rather like the gameplay.
    

 
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