Eureka Seven-Vol. 1: The New Wave
Score: 68% ESRB: Teen Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: BEC Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Adventure/ Shooter
Graphics & Sound: LOADING... Welcome to the game for the Anime series based Eureka Seven-Vol. 1: The New Wave. You are starting from a new beginning, so don't expect to be thrust into the main storyline. LOADING... The graphics have their moments in the cut scenes of this game. There are three different graphical environments you will see. There is the nicely done CGI animated sequences with English voiceovers that look like any other time you try to lip-sync Japanese and English. Then you have the in-game engine scripted events that have a ton of text to read. Then finally, you have the actual in-game graphics that are OK at best. LOADING... I didn't get a chance to watch many of the Anime episodes, so I can only imagine that some of the music, specifically the intro, comes from the series. It is the same cheesy Speed Racer-esque music.
Gameplay: LOADING... Eureka Seven-Vol. 1: The New Wave. If I haven't beaten the "loading" shtick enough by now, then you get my all too unsubtle hint about how you are going to be "playing" this game. You are doing little more than playing an Anime episode as you assume the role of Sumner Sturgeon, an aspiring LFO pilot. There are three gameplay areas. First, is the on-foot or character mode, moving about and shooting. When you are in the academy or the station, you have a small, one room area attached to the store that you will get to move around in and interact with one or two people. You can also exit your LFO during battle. Although forced to at times, I don't recommend it. Humans go splat pretty easy. You have two areas you can upgrade, your character and your LFO. You earn new abilities and attacks as you level, which brings us to the second mode as the fully mechanized, glorious, flaming death of an LFO. This is where you will spend the majority of your time in gameplay. The problem is that you are always in these small, arena like set-ups. They are very limiting and not very inspired environments in order to wage glorious, mechanized, flaming death combat. Last but not least, you have the opportunity to take to the skies in the sport of lifting. Think of sky surfing and you have it, lifting. You will be required to lift both on foot and in an LFO and you receive money for accomplishing your tasks. Use this money to purchase upgrades for yourself and your LFO. So, I know its on the tip of your tongue. What is an LFO? Well... you have about 50 episodes of Anime to watch in order to get the whole picture, but basically they are grown and excavated and then armored by humans to create mechanized suits for attack and defense. The term LFO stands for Light Finding Operation. Again, go back to the 50 episodes for it all to make sense.
Difficulty: LOADING... Eureka Seven-Vol. 1: The New Wave'. So the actual gameplay is not very difficult. You will be engaged in LFO combat one on one, two on one and then two on two. The difficult part is the eye strain of reading orange on black text for hours. In battle, you use attacks in combination, but mostly you can get by with using only one or two simple attacks. You throw a giant metallic boomerang that always manages to find its way back to you. Throw this, knock them down, run up, begin melee. Rinse... repeat.. LOAD. There isn't much to the game besides following along on a fairly decent interactive story. I wanted to feel a greater amount of challenge in any of the events. They built up the final challenge in the first level, and when I was done, I was seriously asking myself: is that it?
Game Mechanics: LOADING... Eureka Seven-Vol. 1: The New Wave. I had to get one more loading in before I went. Why should I be the only one to sit through load after load? There was very little left to bring into this section. The movement on the ground felt very much like a standard third person RPG. To tell you the truth, I felt like I was playing FFVII for a sec, just the way they run around, and trust me that is the only comparison. As you upgrade your attacks for your LFO, it is simply another melee animation. Looks different, but doesn't change gameplay all that much. I liked watching this game, sometimes, but it really left me wanting to actually play something. If you are a fan of the Anime, you may get more out of this title, but as an actual game it fell short for me on an overall scale. Of course, any time you have glorious, mechanized, flaming death, you will always have my attention. Unfortunately, they were not able to keep it here.
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
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