Review: God Eater Burst

Filling in for the Gaming Bro is his cousin, the prestigious TheNationMaker of voice acting fame, here to fill in you peeps with a review on God Eater Burst released on the PSP.



*SPOILER WARNING*

This game has its highs and lows at times living up to expectations and at times falling way below them. I understand BURST is an add-on to God Eater adding a new story arc and missions. Granted it's released in the US way later before the JAP release, but it actually saved us trouble from having to get 60% of the full story then buying an extra 40% of storyline. After completing the game and someday try finishing up the missions, all I can take to review is list some factors of the game.

Character customization is decent enough as you can change your outfit to any of your choice, includes hair, skin, and the voice sample. What's not fun about your character is that he/she doesn't speak during cutscenes. The only ones I've heard were his/her grunt and scream on one cutscene, and a "DON'T RUN AWAY!" line. It's not like Shepherd from the Mass Effect series, and I just wished they would have that kind of improvements.

Weapon customization is low in standard, but wide in variety as you gain some materials and monster materials to make up your desired weapon. There are blades, guns, and shields that are blended into one weapon known as a God Arc, and you can customize and upgrade whatever shit there is to your liking and fighting style if you see fit. Out in the field you switch constantly from blade to gun forms while attacking that certain monster. Wasting bullets deplete a certain gauge called the OP gauge, so you use your blade form to attack whilst replenishing your gauge.

The most interesting feature I find having fun to are the bullet customizations. They give you an option of creating your own bullet sequence to further make it flashy yet powerful. Despite this, there are some limitations like how much you've waste on in through a bullet gauge, amount of "clips" and of course the 8-slot limit that forms your bullet. There are difficulties to your bullet as to painstakingly position each bullet and timing to each bullet before they collide with each other making it useless.

The story from what I can tell is on a post-apocalyptic world. The whole of civilization and cities were ravaged by a breed of monsters known as Aragami. They range from velociraptors, flying eggs with teeth looking like nude women, nun-camouflaged pods, gorillas, mutant gators, kung-fu birds, giant lions, giant scorpion-men, and the list goes on... What you do is just down down these monsters in each missions and rack up some materials to make your weapons. You might wonder if this is something like Monster Hunter, but no, you don't break your weapons, ever. There are two parts - The first part of the story is how you start out, realizing some of your teammate's situation, finding a strange NPC and a certain plot twist that has something to do with the mastermind of it all. The second part is when you realize one of those dead teammates is alive and slowly becoming Aragami and you have to save him.

The characters in the game are an interesting lot, but I find it sad for very little interaction choices in this one. Sure, they're there, but they don't affect the game in some way. Even if you try going out with a team of girls with you, none of the relationship-making elements are there. Some scanty-clad clothing of them made you wish you wanna do them, but sadly no. You have some of them like a cute Russian girl, a hipster from a back-alley, a busty medic, a cold-blooded Squall and the rest goes on. You only come to realize that there are recognizable voices there gave these monkeys some personalities, mainly because BangZoom! Entertainment lent their actors in this project. You got like Crispin Freeman for instance, note the menacing voice somewhere. You could even hear that young ridiculous-ass voice of Johnny Yong Bosch - that manwhore - playing that cool role. Yuri Lowenthal's in it, even my friends' buddy Kyle Hebert is in the works. Being an amateur voice-actor, I can recognize them and feel kinda jealous.

MY REVIEW SCORE: 6-7/10

It's a good range being from 6-7 out of 10 in my opinion because there were some promising moments, yet there are some let-downs that made you wish it's getting repetitive due to some missions you have to repeat all over again whilst racking up materials. There's a good cast of characters yet interactions seem dull, bullet customizations are fun but very time-consuming how you want them to turn out as, and if you ever wonder about what else would happen after you complete the game, nothing much but you do some challenges and face a hidden boss monster.

In other words, it's pretty good but it should've been better.

9-10: GYEAHHH!

7-8: Pretty good

5-6: Should've been better

3-4: Good for a laugh

1-2: Waste of a UMB disc/downloadable game

0: What has gaming come to?