Monday 20 February 2012

God eater burst

Gamespot score:7.5(good)

my score:8.2

(+)Pros:-Engaging story and concept,-thrilling and exciting combat system,-dependable AI controlled team mates make the game an equal blast of fun if you are playing alone rather than with friends,-enemy bosses make combat fun and challenging from the get go,-weapon and monster deisgns are fantastic,-good variety of equipment types.

(-)Cons:-Many monsters are just color pallete swaps which is annoying,- quest variety is suprisingly lacking.

Gameplay time:50 hours+



Time and time again games like to be copied, or in less harsh terms, "inspired from". The victim for this case is capcom's monster hunter, which is a ton of fun to play, but there have been many games "inspired from" it these recent years. Lord of arcana and today's game, God eater, are both games obviously based off monster hunter, and while capcom doesn't seem to really mind, its really obvious. However out of the 3 (MH, LOA and GE), god eater is easily my favourite, for more reasons than one. God eater burst is a great game, and easily the portable monster hunting game to go on the PSP. With a great combat system (IMO slightly better than MH), an ACTUAL legit story, and many more, god eater is a game that will appeal to newcomers and fans of the genre alike.



God eater's story seems normal at first, but kicks off with a bang about quarterway through the game. The earth has been swarmed with aragami, monsters with thirst for human blood, and the people of the planet are trying the repel them with all they have. Then the god eaters emerged, a group of humans infused with the blood of aragami in thier arm. The aragami blood is kept within and when infused they are able to wield the god arc, a weapon meant to cut down aragami. You play as self created character, and in the story you are a newly recruited god eater, and a new breed at that. Normal god eaters can only wield 1 weapon type, as a new type you can wield and switch between any weapon type as you see fit. As the new guy, you are greeted by platoon's members, and thus begins your new life as a god eater as you fight aragami and discover things that you should not that will change the way you live.


Take down monsters with friends or AI controlled team mates.....
THAT ACTUALLY DON'T SUCK.

As said earlier on, god eater is inspiried from Monster hunter, so expect some gameplay similarities. But overall, God eater burst is a more memoriable package. For one, the story is actually good. The concept is amazing and its definetely much better than being just "a hunter that kills monsters for loot and money". The combat system is somewhat similar to Monster hunter, but again, different on its own. During battle with monsters, you get your basic attacks depending on what type of sword or gun you are using. You can only use either a sword or a gun type at once, but you can switch between to 2 anytime in battle, which instantly feels awesome. Wielding more than one weapon type in combat allows your playstyle to be more diverse and you can adapt to each weapon depending on what monster you are facing.

Thats not all! You also get to equip a shield type to your god arc, other than a blade and a gun, and of course you have a standard block button to help shield yourself from incoming attacks. You can alternatively dodge your attacks by dashing or...wait for it.....JUMPING away! Thats right, you can fcking jump in this game, take that monster hunter. Theres also items dedicating for using items and navigating through them, as well as a sprint option to allow quicker travelling. Doing most actions will drain your stamina bar, and firing bullets from your gun will reduce ST. This all seems pretty cool but it gets better. Your god arc's weapon types are further split. Blades, guns and shields are splits into thier own sub categories, giving you even more freedom of choice. You can equip a close ranged gun, a fast but low damaging blade and a heavy shield....any combination works. Also, you can even CREATE the very bullets you shoot out from your gun, even giving you variety and choice to what types of bullet you create and use in battle. Now THATS in depth.


Yeap, God eater has its good share of badass monster fights as well.

To make things even better, God eater allows you to bring along AI controlled team mates for all of your missions, once again thats something monster hunter always lacked (Your little feline allies in freedom unite are fcking retarded anyway). Your allies are, for once in most games, dependable, and ARE NOT retarded. They fight like seasoned players, dodging attacks and dishing out blows of thier own. Of course to make things a little more challenging, Namco decreased the damage done by AI team mates, because the weapons they are wielding are downright overpowered, and if they would have killed early game enemies in a couple of strikes if that were the case. Your AI partners serve as great party systems when not playing with your friends, you can have up to 4 allies, and fighting bosses as a team always felt better than fighting them alone anyway.

Also, these bosses are all challenging from the get go. Unlike monster hunter, the enemies in god eater do not have increased damage as the game goes on, because there is no armor type in this game. Clothes are just to make your character look cooler, there are no defense stats to them. A regular konga can still kick your ass if you go unprepared, and this is what makes the game fun. Each and every boss you are going to face keeps you on your toes. Plus, most of these monsters look really cool. While early Kongas and Chi yous don't look too intimidating, later enemies like the vajra, borg calman, ouroborous and many more make your battles look all the more badass. And, for some icing on the cake, the loot you gather from these monsters (like monster hunter), can be used to forge new blades, guns or shields. Of course, these look great, and the feeling when you finally forge a weapon after killing a powerful monster numerous times always feels incredibly satisfactory.


The characters are certainly worthy of your interest.

Like monster hunter though, God eater suffers from some terrible lack of quests. Its always kill this, kill that, or gather some of this. Its particularly even worse in god eater, since majority of the quests are boss killing quests. Also, an annoying thing present in god eater, is the fact that you will be fighting alot of the same monsters with just colour pallete swaps. Sure they add a "fallen" to the boss name, but can't you make it look a little more "fallen"? Other than just giving it a brighter colour and making it look more friendly. I swear there can be like 4 versions of a single boss with just 4 different colour pallete swaps with no change whatsoever. It gets annoying. But don't get me wrong, the god types are pretty damn cool.

God eater burst is a great hunting game worth the time of those fans of the genre. If you are new to the monster hunting games, God eater burst is a great place to start, better than monster hunter anyway. The learning curve isn't hard, and there are more than enough factors to keep gamers interesting, including an accessable and fun combat system and an actual story that gets better as the game progresses. As it stands now, its a better game than monster hunter in my opinion, and I hope the upcoming god eater 2 is even better than this one is.



This is on my wall as a poster btw!


Happy gaming!