Help! A Dingo ate my Orbital Frame!
The game begins as the main character,Dingo Egret, stumbles across the Orbital Frame (a mech) named Jehuty whilst on a mining mission on the planet Callisto. The vicious BAHRAM forces from Mars are after Jehuty, and thus Dingo begins on a journey to battle the BAHRAM forces and his own past. The story is progressed through a series of anime cutscenes, in game discussions and of course the gameplay.
The gameplay revolves around piloting Jehuty to defeat enemies and progress through the game. Jehuty is amazingly agile, can do close range blade attacks, mutli-targeting burst shots and even a rather large energy ball. Add to this grab attacks (which involves grabbing parts of the environments), and a variety of sub-weapons acquired throughout the game and you have a rather interesting game.
Would you like control instructions?
To assist you in this is ADA - the battle computer installed inside Jehuty. She provides helpful hints on how to progress through the many varied obstacles in the game. She functions both as a good way of getting hints for beating bosses, and also as an interesting character in her own right.
Just about everything you could possibly want to do in an Orbital Frame is in the game: you get to take on small squadrons of enemies, huge swarms of tiny ships, fleets of battleships, huge scale land battles and even intense one on one boss encounters. You cannot help but feel as if you are playing inside a well made anime. Thankfully there is a lot of variety in the bosses, and more needs to be done that just hack away. However the targeting system and camera, whilst generally very good, can cause a lot of grief in some sections. One such section is a series of rooms I have affectionately dubbed as "the crushinator".
Jaw Droppingly Slick Visuals
The graphics should silence any Playstation 2 critics. They look amazing and only very occasionally is there slowdown. However it doesn't detract from the game at all, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the game is just in slow motion to give you a good look at all the carnage you are dealing out. The designs and general layout are very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 2, however this is by no means a bad thing.
The soundtrack is very well done and ranges from sweeping strings to fast paced rhymthic tracks for the action. All the dialogue in the game is voiced, and on the whole is well done. Of course some of the voices are very cheesy, but if anything it adds to the characters.
What makes this game so good is how the action flows so well and the visual style of the game compliments this perfectly. Grabbing an ememy, spinning around and hurling them into another enemy and then dashing away whilst offloading a volley of homing lasers is not only intuitive, it looks beautiful. Dashing behind an enemy as they strike, knocking them down then using the subweapon Wisp to bring them back into your grasp so that you can use them as a human shield or offensive weapon is just another way to wreak havoc. There are just so many combinations that string together so well to make it a very enjoyable experience.
What Extras did we get?
The PAL version has a few extras over the NTSC version. There is an extra intro (combining footage of the game and also in game demos of Jehuty in action against enemies), a few Extra Missions and some tweaks in 2 player mode. Whilst it is good to have them, they really aren't good enough to justify the long delay in the PAL version.
Overall Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is great fun. Although the story mode isn't very long, it is very engaging and the speed and quality of the action is extremely satisfying. Well worth a look.
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