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OMEGA BOOST
Sony PlayStation
Copyright © Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.
1 Player
3D Shooter
SCPS 45399
Available Now in Japan
Where to buy
—by Kenneth Lee
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From seemingly out of nowhere, OMEGA BOOST arrives on the PlayStation, made
by Polyphony Digital, former internal team at Sony Japan, and creators of
such wonderful magic as MOTOR TOON GP and the ultimate racing game, GRAN
TURISMO. While Polyphony has proven beyond a doubt that they can do racing
games, doing a 3D mech shooter is something totally different: Capturing
the feel of outer space dog fighting, mech physics, proper weapon
implementation and just balancing out the game to make it fun is a huge
task that usually takes developers years (or many iterations of a product)
to master. And yet on the first try, OMEGA BOOST is dead-on perfect in that
aspect. As with GRAN TURISMO, Polyphony seems to have captured the very
essence of anime-style, space mech combat in OMEGA BOOST. UNiT / Bandai
could learn a thing or two after the wretched MACROSS VF-X game. That
game, while bearing the wonderful MACROSS name, sporting the entire barrage
of mechs from the MACROSS universe, and some great anime cut scenes and
idol songs to boot, failed horribly with the most important aspect of any
game, the gameplay and controls. It is the greatest irony when something
you wished for (great controls and gameplay) turns out to be no less
important than something you originally overlooked (the overall MACROSS
universe and 'interface' for the game). This is the unfortunate case with
OMEGA BOOST. While sporting the finest anime-style space mech combat ever
featured in a video game, that is also the only thing OMEGA BOOST has going
for it, and at that, it fails to have any memorable, endearing qualities
and ends up to be nothing more than a generic "great 3D shooter."
When first demoed at the Spring Tokyo Game Show '99, this game showed great
promise. Players were able to play one stage in the game and in it, you
could fly around anywhere in your mech and blast away legions of enemy
mechs, mobile satellite units and giant enemy battle fortresses! From
there, Sony provided a sneak peek (illustration gallery) showing conceptual
sketches for the mech and various control rooms and environmental layouts.
Naturally, expectations were flying: If the creators put 100+ cars in Gran
Turismo (and all of them very cool and unique), imagine what they could do
for OMEGA BOOST! They could put transforming mechs, old-school, giant
'Gunbuster' / Mazinger-style mechs, or Mobile Suits and Gundams, or tons of
variations in-between. Imagine actually having space cities that you could
visit or stopping by the command center (that they drew sketches for)—i.e.
having an actual free-roaming, SNATCHER type interface (being able to
roam around the city or wait for the next mission). I mean, if the crappy
MACROSS VF-X game could set such a great tone and atmosphere (saving the
Milky Dolls and piloting through different MACROSS environments), OMEGA
BOOST could do it easily as well, right? Wrong.
OMEGA BOOST features one (and only one) mech that you start out with and
finish the game with. Well, there must tons of different types of weapons
and armor you can get and level up, right? Wrong again. While you can earn
a "Viper Boost" super attack later on, that is the only thing you can get.
To add insult to injury, the premise of the game is ultra-cheese, B-movie
sci-fi garbage featuring live action actors who unfortunately only detract
from the game. In fact the premise has you going in to destroy the core of
this 'reactor' in a huge mechanized ball, that is called the "Death Star,"
er, I mean, AlphaCore. While it could be seen as a 'tribute' to Star Wars,
overall it smacks of a lack of creativity or design, and seems more
insulting than anything else.
Don't get me wrong, OMEGA BOOST features the finest anime-style mech
fighting ever seen in a game, hands down. When you first turn it on, you
can't help but think that you are finally playing that video game that Max
and Myria were playing in the arcades in Macross City when they first met!
OMEGA BOOST captures the feel of blasting away at enemy pods or rushing
head-on against an entire Zentraedi space armada! Many a time when you go
one-on-one against various mech bosses, it feels just like you are Isamu
Dyson in your YF-19 chasing after Guld in his YF-21
in MACROSS PLUS. It is
that good! When you are dog fighting one-on-one against fast enemy
fighters, they will hit their 'boosts' and you can see 'sonic booms'
trailing them as you frantically chase after them trying to get a lock-on.
You can twist and turn quickly with your mech and fire away a barrage of
laser shots, all while 'side-boosting' and maneuvering around their streams
of bullets!
The controls are tight and responsive, using full Dual Shock Analog
support, allowing you to use the analog pad for movement of your mech,
while using L1 to 'Scan' (Lock-on and Strafe),
L2 to 'Viper Boost,' Circle button to
'Boost,' and X to 'Fire.' These are the essential controls and they are
very easy-to-learn and immediately become second nature. The framerate is
also solid, around 30 fps, with almost no slowdown ever. So what could be
wrong? After all, the core gameplay and controls are nearly perfect. The
answer is simply that there is not enough of a story or a well-thought out
universe to encompass and house this godly engine. As strange as it sounds,
that is a huge deterrent to the game and ultimately is its Achilles' Heel.
With a great engine, and giving you the 'essence' of anime-style space mech
combat and dog fighting, OMEGA BOOST is still a great 3D shooter, but a
generic one at that. If all you want is to do is fly around and blast stuff
in a mech, then look no further. But if you'd like a nice polish, high
production values, and a solid universe / premise to encompass a great mech
shooting engine, then OMEGA BOOST falls short. What's frustrating is that
Polyphony and Sony were so close: It's almost as if Bandai should've given
the MACROSS license to Sony and allowed them to use that as the universe /
shell to encase the awesome engine of OMEGA BOOST. Instead of blasting away
at legions of Zentraedi battle cruisers in your VF-1 "Skull 1," as Roy
Fokker, you're in some generic mech blasting away at non-descript enemy
targets. Instead of earning new weapons or new planes/mechs, maybe a YF-19
like Isamu's, you earn nothing (well, you score more points, but stay with
the same mech). Instead of saving the "Milky Dolls" (OK, not the most
original concept, but still, it originated from MACROSS, so it's still
cool) or helping to defend the SDF-1, you take on the wanna-be Death Star.
Sure the mech design for your mech in OMEGA BOOST is ironically by Shoji
Kawamori, the original designer behind MACROSS (Robotech) and MACROSS PLUS,
the mech itself looks like a poor man's version of a VF-1 Valkyrie fighter.
Setting up important (and varied) missions, having a well thought out
universe and more weapons or mechs would have put OMEGA BOOST into the
upper echelons of classic gaming history. What we are left with is an
important lesson that great controls and a solid engine alone do not make a
great game: Story, premise, production values, and more interesting
gameplay is just as vital if not more so.
Rating: 7.8/10 |
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