The seminal game about giant robots fighting each other is finally getting an HD rerelease this fall. Good news is that it is still a blast.
I’ve, admittedly, never played either of the Zone of the Enders games before despite loving giant robots but they are games that I’ve always wanted to play. So when Konami had a demo at E3 that let you play through the first area in both games I had to check it out.
The HD work they’ve done looks really really good. This is in part because of the cel-shading used throughout. However the game has a serious case of anti-aliasing problems. That is to say, models looked very jagged up close.
The first thing I noticed is that the camera jerks and swings around when you are fighting to get a more ‘cinematic’ view but it was really hard to follow at first. Then the controls didn’t seem to do what the game said they were supposed to do (my fault for skipping the tutorial, games fault for not updating that crappy tutorial) but I eventually figured it out. I’m still not sure why I have to be moving to do certain things but whatever. Once I got into it, the game was a lot of fun.
Both demos were short but gave me a pretty good idea of what the game will be like. Basically there will be sections where you fight off dozens of small easier enemies and then a boss battle will happen after. I might be wrong but I get the feeling I’m close.
Some of the anime scenes only looked to be up-scaled but the in game character portraits are all HD now. The anime stuff looked really interesting to anyone interested in sci-fi in general; not just anime fans.
Fighting the boss in the second game was really fun and required a bit of strategy to survive. The rest of the combat was less exciting but when you are firing 30 missiles at a time, it’s still pretty fun.
There’s a reason why these games have garnered such a cult following: they are really good at what they do. Few games nail the feeling of flying around in a giant robot but this is one of them.
This is the perfect collection for fans and for people who missed out on it the first time. The game will also come with a demo for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance so get out your wallets now.
Zone of the Enders HD Collection will be released sometime this fall for Xbox 360, PS3, and PS Vita.
