G-Saviour (PS2)
Gundams. Mechs. Shogun Warriors. Transformer lookin’ dudes. Big fuckin’ robots. No matter what you call them, there will always be a group of nerds out there who want to control them. Well, rejoice, nerds! In G-Saviour for the PS2, you get to do just that.
After sitting through a ten minute long intro (I actually went and crapped while it was going, came back, and it was still going), you finally get to choose your robot. Of course, from what I could tell you only get to choose from one, so that’s really not choosing. After that, the game loads for a while, because you know, the game didn’t know which robot you were going to choose. Once the game finally loads up, it’s shoot-em-up city.
If I could find the name and address for whoever designed the controls for this game, I would gladly send them a picture of my cramped thumb. To fly the G-Saviour, you need to HOLD DOWN L3 and also STEER WITH THE LEFT ANALOG STICK. Yeah. So the entire time you’re flying around, you’re pushing down with your left thumb and steering with it at the same time. In only a minute or two my opposable digit began quivering with pain.What’s worse is, you can only fly for about fifteen seconds before having to recharge your hover power. It reminds me of those mini RC cars everyone got a couple of years ago for Christmas that ran for minutes before needing recharging. Except the difference is, these are big-ass military robots. Those wacky Japanese.
Even though you end up flying most of the time, you’ll find that there are some things you can’t fly over, like … oh, the tops of hills. Seriously. Someone built a big fuckin’ robot that can’t fly over a hill? This thing has more weapons of mass destruction strapped to it than all of Iraq, and yet you can’t fly over a molehill? Even more frustrating is that at any given time you can really only control two axis. When you’re flying, you can strafe and move forward and backwards, but you can’t really “turn”. Likewise, when you’re walking, you can walk forwards and backwards, and turn on a time, but no longer strafe. You can use L2 to kind of “hop” in a general direction but it’s hard to do. When I ordered my robot I wanted a Toyota but it looks like I got a Hyundai. This is especially nice when people are shooting at you, and when you want to evade their shots you just end up pivoting and getting shot in the back of the head. This robot ain’t got nothing on Johnny 5.
Killing targets is pretty simple because the entire targeting mechanism is automatic. Get near anything and it’ll highlight in your targeting system. Then just press R2 and you’ll blast it to bits. If you’re flying, evading incoming fire is pretty easy. If you’re walking you’ll get hit every time. It’s like you robot’s saying, “don’t worry boss, I’ll take this one on the shoulder.” So he does, again and again, and I have to let him while I give my left thumb a rest from holding down L3.
Several of the buttons launch small, short range laser blasts. When you get bored, start hitting O, which launches a Death Blossom style attack on everything around you — which usually isn’t much, enemies are fairly few and far between in this game. But go ahead and hit it because it’s great to watch. Your robot will just start flying around shooting everything in site. There are explosions, missles, fire … it’s like Beavis and Butthead’s dream.
Your cheap ass robot is also equipped with a fancy radar system that appears to have come out of a box of Japanese breakfast cereal. I’m serious, I’ll bet better toys have come out of boxes of Cap’n Crunch. The radar system will show you enemies after you have had a visual on them for five to ten seconds. Yeah. Your line of sight has twice as much distance as your radar. So, the radar is for … ?
While destroying the enemy’s stronghold, gamers are treated to a snazzy little Japanacheezey piano tune I like to call, “Casio #3.” The song is not very long and is very repeditive, so pretty soon you will be wishing the targeting system could be turned toward your PS2 itself or at least the volume knob. The menu songs sound like every song I ever heard in any DDR game.
I beat the first mission and then turned G-Saviour off. There was an option to save my game at that point but I couldn’t really imagine anyone who had played the game before wanting to play it again. Save yourself the trouble; go down to the nearest thrift store and pick up an old used Transformer toy instead. It’ll be twice as fun and half the frustration. And, it’ll be able to go over hills.