Dream of Waking

I have finally, finally, finally finished Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. I missed the boat on this one when it was first released, picked it up from GOG when it was re-released there, got stuck finding an exit, and now I’ve cleaned it up. This is an old Monolith game, and it shows. It’s not as buggy as Blood 2, but it has its fair share of glitches. Still, the action is fast, the mechs are fun, and it still sports some impressive-for-its-time effects. The mechs have a useless vehicle mode, and some of the fights are in unreasonably cramped quarters. Gun fights are super-short, as nearly all the enemies have machine guns and you can’t particularly afford to take a lot of damage from them. It’s usually a case of who spot whom first, because if you can get a couple bullets in them first that’s nearly enough to kill them, or at least interrupt them long enough to mop up some others. The game is clearly heavily influenced by anime and the designs and sound effects work fantastically towards this purpose. Overall, rather fun!