News: Gundam Battlefield Record U.C. 0081

March 17, 2009, 05:23 AM

by ollie, via Bandai Namco -
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This game needs a bit more explanataion than usual. A couple of weeks back, news started surfacing that a new Gundam series was in the works. It would again be set in the Universal Century timeline and feature the M-MSV Gundam variant RX-78-7 (as updated by the omnipresent Katoki Hajime). For those unaware, 2009 is Gundam's 30th Anniversary and normally Bandai go a bit nuts with these (as the 1/1 scale RX-78-2 has been covered pretty much everywhere). Well, this new anime turned out to be a PlayStation 3 game instead.

Now, the last PlayStation 3 Gundam game developed by Bandai (this one) was akin to having your retina deep fried at the blissful refresh rate of 15 frames a second. In short it was a total functional travesty. However, Bandai have done something like this before. Specifically with the near launch game, Journey to Jaburo on the PlayStation 2. They then followed it up with a far superior sequel Lost War Chronicles (which annoyingly never saw a Western release, though oddly the manga did).

This new PlayStation 3 game, dubbed as Battlefield Record U.C. 0081, is being touted as a spiritual successor to Lost War Chronicles, as the game is running at a faster clip and features a swathe of anime cutscenes (with character designs that look an awful lot like Toshihiro Kawamoto's, who also worked on Lost War Chronicles). This, to those that don't know, is a good thing. It will also feature 8 player online versus, which isn't too shabby either. There is no word on a release date or price as yet but this could be one of the rarer entries into the Gundam gaming pantheon. You know, the ones that don't suck.

Update: Famitsu has got some nice coverage on the game here.