Game #850: Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - MaxiBoost ON

 It's been a long, long, long wait.

 It's been over four years since Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Full Boost first release, and I know I'm not the only one who was begging for a port of Mobile Suit Gundam Ectreme VS MaxiBoost ON, and somehow, someone up there in Bandai-Namco's offices listened, and it's finally here. We had to sit through the awfully misguided Extreme VS Force, and the weird consolation prize that was Gundam Versus, but right now, it doesn't matter, because MaxiBoost is here and it's everything I wanted and hoped for.

 I've already written at length about why I love this game so much, and at its core it hasn't really changed, so... yeah, it's still amazing. On the other hand, I LOVE finally getting to play the game with English menus, this is everything I've ever wanted since Gundam VS Zeta Gundam on PS2.

 The Burst has system yet again, now it's divided into three kinds: Shooting, Defensive and Physical offense. To be perfectly honest, I don't really care too much about this change, and I don't think it really changes how you approach the game, but it does make it so that now you know how to play your defensive game when the opponent engages its burst.

 At first I was gonna complain that I missed vanilla Extreme's Single Player bosses... but they are still here. If you beat a route without using continues and reaching 600.000 points you can then fight a boss from the original or from Full Boost, which is pretty neat. That said, MaxiBoost's new boss(Singular, since it's the same for all routes) is rather lame in comparison!

 The 1000 cost units got bumped to 1500, which is an interesting change, and I welcome it. The single player Mission Mode is pretty much on par with what came before, but instead of upgrading your Mobile Suits you can equip them with passive abilities to enhance their performance.

 The game has over 183 mobile suits to play as, you simply can't top this. Full Boost introduces the lame clones, such as Lunamaria's Impulse for Shinn's Impulse, and most of these clones are pretty much identical but with lower or higher stats, which is really lame. That said, I welcome the ones that at least look different, like the orange Destiny, Kamille's Gundam MK II(which is black and lacks the Super mode) or even the orange Gaia which lacks the ability to change into the dog form at will, but suits like Lacus' Infinite Justice and Lunamaria's Impulse are just lazy and boring. That said, there are like 20 clone suits at most, and even less of the worthless type, so there are at least 150 unique suits.

 This is a Playstation 3 game and it shows. I didn't give Gundam Versus enough credit last year, because that game looked quite better than this one. That said, the PS3 versions of Extreme VS had some slowdown here and there, but this version runs at a smooth 60 FPS, even split-screen multiplayer maintains a steady 60fps. And while Extreme Versus looks 'better' as far as the quality of the 3-D models, I prefer this pseudo cell-shaded look. It's a more colorful game, and I think it suits it better.

 Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - MaxiBoost ON is the culmination of the Extreme VS series, and the wait was worth it, painful, but worth it. This might very well be my favorite game on the console.

 10