7
« on: February 05, 2026, 10:34:24 pm »
4: Gundam Breaker 4 (PS5)
I wasn't planning to play this yet, but I got stuck on the plane tyrant boss in Code Veronica X and wanted to play anything but that or Tomb Raider for a while. I put GB4 in to try it out and ended up bingeing the game in about a week because it was so fun to play. Basically it's a game where you play as a gundam, tear parts off of other gundams in combat, and use those to improve your own. However you're not actually playing as a gundam, you're playing as a computer-generated representation of a plastic gundam model in a fictional online game based on the hobby of collecting and building gundam models. This concept causes some issues I'll get to later. The core gameplay loop is excellent. You can use the parts you break off other gundams in missions to customize and create your own unique custom gundams, which is really cool and gives you the feeling of having an enormous collection of action figures to play with. There's also a Diablo-style loot system where each part has its own randomly-generated level, rarity, and skills. You can either farm for stronger parts or use synthesis to level your favorite parts up, improve their rarity, or add new skills to them. After a while it really makes your custom gundams feel custom.
Where the game really suffers, though, is the story. It starts off with you and other players of the fictional online game forming a clan and trying to "take your team to state", so to speak. This is fine except for some of the characters being high schoolers and the writing being somewhat childish as a result. Also because the gundams are used as your lobby avatars, you'll see them doing things the "actual" mobile suits wouldn't do, such as laughing or acting scared. It's a tad offputting, but if those were the only issues, the story would still be serviceable at worst. What really kills it is when it jumps the shark in Chapter 7. Earlier at the end of chapter 5, one of your teammates who was obviously an AI clone of another teammate gets kidnapped by a rival clan of hackers who take over the servers during a tournament. Chapters 6 and 7 are then about rescuing her. Sure, AI companion character, it's been done before in countless JRPGs, seems like no big deal... until you get to the final boss, where the mask slips off and the story turns into aggressive pro-AI corporate propaganda. The "villain' is a former developer who took over the servers to protest the game's use of AI to create content. When he explains this to the main characters, they all immediately start preaching to him about how the AI girl is just as human as they are and that he's the one without a soul. They go on to say that everyone needs to accept AI in the game because it's the inclusive thing to do (not joking, that's the actual kind of language they use). They even say that the AI girl has the same rights as any other human. Basically the message the story tries to push is that if you don't like AI, you're a bigoted terrorist. Not bigoted against specific types of humans, mind you, but bigoted against AI! Apparently you can be bigoted against nonliving things now.
The game gets an 8/10 for its gameplay, but unfortunately the terrible story knocks it down to a 6.5/10. It's very disturbing to see a video game studio trying to push the public acceptance of AI Psychosis, which is the belief that AI is alive. People are literally dying now in real life because they made the same mistake these characters made and assigned personhood to a computer program, then obeyed it when it told them to kill themselves.
Completed:
Tomb Raider II (Evercade)
Tomb Raider III (Evercade)
Mafia: The Old Country (PS5)
Gundam Breaker 4 (PS5)
In Progress:
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (PS4)
Final Fantasy IV Advance (GBA)
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X (Gamecube)
Show Posts