Since there is at least one person out there interested in this, and since I don’t know if/when I’ll be back on over break, here are my first impressions.
The graphics are pretty nice though there is nothing about them that just screams awesome in my mind. The music and sound effects are pretty standard fare, again nothing really grabs me yet.
THe gameplay is best described as a dumbed down version of Armored Core. Square and Circle fire different weapons and X activates and deactivates the booster (unlike in AC, this is a toggle). This is where the similarities end. Triangle is used to lock on to targets and the right stick manpulates the camera, albeit with both axes inverted >:( The automatic target switching combined with the fact that most mechs turn at rates somewhere between that of a semi and the hour hand on a clock make for a rather disorienting experience as I struggle to keep my mech pointed in the general direction of the action. Even with boosters on mechs in this game seem to lack any significant forward velocity, which makes traversing some stages a real chore.