Reviewing the current build (4/8/2011)

I'd like to formally start by saying I don't in any way feel I have gotten the full ZOEOA experience. Due to the complex installation process and shakey configurations for this game, I am next-to-positive certain elements may not have been 100% up to full standards, such as graphics or textures. With this in mind, take this review with a grain of salt in that respect. On the other hand, when a game practically tells you that if you have problems you should go piss off and configure every setting yourself down to the finest nuisance without bothering to include a handy coupon for a three year scholarship at rendering college so you can really understand what the fuck it is you're doing, I can't help but feel simultaneously flattered and isolated by the game developers confidence in my computational suavity. It's almost like a good chap of yours came along and said "Hey I just invented this awesome rocket bicycle, here try it out!" and proceeded to dump all 176 pieces of seemingly-indistinguishable metal parts which, collectively, make up said bike before locking himself in a dark room with loud music playing within. You'd sit there sucking your thumb, yearning to figure out a way to assemble the aforementioned awesome bike, but too hesitant to bring yourself to touch a single piece lest your crappy inexperience lead you to constructing an abusive and semi-anti-Semitic unicycle that'll bash you in the head for not bringing it a cold beer. So your friend returns to find you huddled in the corner in a pile of your own urine, trembling from the overwhelming uncertainty of the whole thing.

Regardless, a good gamer does their best to extract what fun they can salvage, and there is fun to be had here. The problem is it is covered by a thick layer of problems, and only rarely manages to poke its head above the surface to remind you of the game's potential as a whole.

Graphics

The one thing you can't really fault ZOEOA for is the graphics. It's clear a lot of work went into the blur and motion effects of the game. When it works, it looks awesome. The problem is GETTING it to work in the first place. Despite turning the f12 mod on and off and constantly adjusting display settings, clipping and slowdown issues continued to step on my gaming experience. Marduk in particular was having some serious clipping issues, with yellow Gundam feet sticking out of his legs almost constantly. The mecha design in this game is, well, decent. Most mecha spend the game so far away from the player, and amidst so much blur, shaded scenery and obstacles, that you very-rarely get any idea what it is you're fighting, and the only way to really appreciate the designs at all would be if you happen to fly quite close to your enemy (a very bad idea). Some of the mecha bear interesting designs, while others are almost copy+paste Gundam models with a few minor tweaks here and there (I saw at least two Aile Strike Gundam mods and two Freedom Gundam mods =P). The majority of the mecha seem to be deviations of already-existing mecha, with a handful of exceptions. Another visual issue is the HUD itself. The ZOE veins on the side look cool, but combined with the MASSIVE amount of warning indications, flashing Ring-Radar-esque attack notifications and a cluster of other numbers, distance indicators, meters, pilot profiles and notifications, everything ends up being an overwhelming onslaught on the eyes. To make matters worse, almost all of these indicators flash between the yellow and red spectrum, which tends to lead everything to sort of blend as there is no real visual exclusion and therefore differentiation between information. While with focus it is possible to use the HUD effectively, I eventually opted to simply ignore the majority of the massive orange blob in favor of focusing on incoming shots visually, another big problem in a game this hectic.

Sound

The ZOE soundtrack, with a few other mecha songs thrown in. Not much else to say in this regard. However, the one MAJOR FLAW that MUST be addressed is the insanity-inducing voice-spamming. Characters spill out the SAME LINE EVERY time you fire an attack, are hit by an attack, think about an attack or even ponder a word that rhythms with "attack." What's worse is that these voice clips interrupt one-another constantly, and play EVERY time their triggering event is activated. The result? Dingo piloting Marduk is hit by a multi-strike beam attack and I get to hear,

"Do-Do-Don'-Do-Do-Do-Don't thi-Do-Do-Do-Don't-Don't think lightly of Jehuty!"

EVERY. TIME.

Awesome. Sidenote, I'm not even IN Jehuty -_-

Fix this, seriously. It's not hard to create a setup where voice clips play a small percentage of the time when performing certain actions, and randomizing the clips themselves so we don't need to hear the same line delivered ad-infinitum.

Gameplay

Essentially, it's the Gundam VS. series. Problem is, it's the Gundam VS. system with one of its major core gameplay mechanics utterly shattered. The Boost system. In the Gundam VS. system, Mobile Suits had a finite limit to how much boost they could use before needing to touchdown. This made for a tactile aspect of combat as you would have to time your attacks to the instant of your foe bottoming out their movement and dropping to the ground, affording you a key opportunity to strike. It also helped to prevent long-range type MSs from "top screening" or flying to the top of the map and laying down a constant bombardment to lockdown players below. ZOEOA takes this major aspect of the gameplay, and tosses it out the window when it comes to the Orbital Frame class. The result is a game without a sense of strategy. One of ZOEOA's biggest and best draws are some of its attacks. Unleashing a series of massive arcane circles that bombard enemies with an array of light is an epic sight to behold. Too bad that, at a certain point, you realize all these elaborate and epic attacks fall short, as your targets have no need to stop moving. I tried several times to consistently employ my larger Subweapons, but while this worked well for the first few levels of the game, after a point it became clear that simply strafing my opponents and spamming the primary laser attack was easily tenfold more efficient. Combine that with the aforementioned visual issues and some random blue cloud explosion effects which do little more than cause confusion and here is a rundown of my play experience,

"Okay, landed in a space map. Wait, how am I standing on space? Ah well, hey look more guys to shoot. Left arrow + X + Z, Left arrow + X + Z, Left arrow + X + Z *five minutes later* okay, one down. Hey look, another thing popped in. Can't tell for the life of me what it is cause it's so dark here and so far away but it's shooting lasers-o-pain at me so let's fight back. Yaknow what, I'm feeling bold, guess I'll try using one of my Subweapo-OHMYGAAAAGGHHGAHGAHGAH! O-Okay that was a mistake, back to what works Left arrow + X + Z, Left arrow + X + Z, Left arrow + X + Z, guess I'll be doing this until the game tells me I've spammed the Mech Warrior "Circle of Death" on enough robots to end this so I can leave." =\

Furthermore, enemies would CONSTANTLY "top screen", ascending CONSTANTLY. And with no ties to gravity, the levels quickly became decided by who could climb higher than the other player. At that point, you're forced to chase your target as they infinitely dash away from you while simultaneously raining down a hailstorm of fire on your head as you try in vain to blind-fire upwards at enemies you can't really see. Inevitably you get struck enough times to trigger the Gundam VS. "damage fall" (the threshold for which seems very odd in this game.) and then get to watch as your mecha falls AAAAAALL the way back down to the floor (these falls sometimes exceeding 5 full seconds). Back to square 1. -_-

ZOEOA has potential. There is a great deal of creativity put into attacks and combat, but it feels clotted by an unnecessary attachment to the Gundam VS. system without a grasp of how that system really works. What's worse, clinging to the Gundam franchise makes this game feel VERY disconnected from Zone of the Enders, as I would think ZOEOA would try to emulate the "Zero Combat, High Speed Robot" combat system of the ZOE games themselves, rather than employing a system based around strictly land-based combat with limited flight. For further updates I would highly recommend considering revamping the core gameplay mechanic to be more reflective of the Z.O.E. games themselves. If the system can be redesigned to be more akin to the work it draws its inspiration from, and combines that system with its already quality grasp of style, graphics and combat, we could be looking at something awesome.

my word, exactly xD

Well... this review is very useful! It pointed out all of the flaws(and even some that I haven't noticed myself).

Half of these flaws will be guaranteed fixed in the final release, but some... such as the "landing in space" thing.... well the graivty cannot be turned off in the engine since it was originally meant for Gundams.

My apologies for that... I might as well remove the space map and replace it with a detailed environment so that it doesnt look so silly.

Another thing I will fix is the finite flight time on LEV's.
The "Gundams" in the game were the original mechs in the game.
Furthermore, for some reason this "Gundam parts on ZOE mechs" glitch is happening on some of your PC's but none of mine over here for some reason.

Of all 15 computers of various hardware and graphics cards, not one has shown Gundam parts on Marduk or any other of the ZOE mechs.

Perhaps the engine behaves differently on your graphics cards and some of the ani. scripts somehow continue to display the parts that they were meant to move.


Ani. scripts cannot be made from scratch, they need a model-piece template which can then be re-animated into doing something else.

The "aile strikes" are by no means part of ZOEOA and simply came with the engine. None of the ZOEOA mecha were made with the "copy & paste " method of the Gundam models and are completely original creations.


TO deal with the "top screening AI", I will hereby give LEV's infinite flight time just the same as raptors.

My original idea of this was to give LEV players a chance to use boost limits for strategies, and have increased the armor for increased surviveability against the raptors. Meanwhile the raptors had infinite boost, but very little armor.

But apparently, this is not the case, and will be fixed promptly before the final release.My sincere apologies for this deficit.

The blur will be toned down for greater visibility and some colors will be enhanced for better long-rage views.

Also... the spammy pilots voices are to be blamed on the engine creators, Curious Factory.
I promise that all ZOE pilots in the final release wil have little to no voices at all.
THis has been a problem on the UKXP engine for a while, but it can easily be overcome by lowering the voice volume in the initial config settings upon startup.

Thank you for this wonderful review! It gave me everything I was looking for, flaws and complaints. With this information, I know what to fix,improve, and enhance for the final release. This was definitely useful to the project and I'm grateful for you taking your time to review this game.


Thanks

-Reinier Espendez Jr.

One last thing though:

The engine has the potencial to be very close to ZOE, but the thing that makes this engine so unreliable is how I cannot remove the gravity from it.

It's virtually impossible to completely remove the gravity from that game!

Or is it?........
I need someone who knows a little bit of C++ to edit the exe. We just might be onto something here....