alright FINE i'll play Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo for the PS2 since you've all been emailing me about it constantly

been getting into Gundam lately so i wanted to play a game that would likely turn that around. there are about a million million of them and most look not amazing, this one included. i specifically sought out one that adapted the anime's story, but all of them that looked okay go way past the '79 series, and i am still a big robot baby only up to the '85 one. i do NOT need it spoiled for me that war turns out to be bad when so far i've been given the impression that it is cool

really i've been in a mecha mood in general and i was considering starting up Armored Core instead but i don't think it has Char Aznable (UPDATE: i have since learned there is another FromSoftware mecha game that does have Char Aznable which changes everything). pretty sure i will be the only person in the past 15 years to play this for the first time because when i look up gameplay videos all the comments are along the lines of "loved this growing up....they don't make them like they used to!" it could just be footage of a turd sitting in a bucket and people would be nostalgic over when they were kids coming home from the turds in buckets store

it's kind of genius to have no tutorial so the player thinks their first foray into battle being like this is just a result of not yet knowing how to play, when really the combat is just like this. in the first episode the dude finds the operations manual sitting on the ground after being blown out of someone's hands, in the middle of a warzone, and proceeds to stand around reading it, out in the open, in the middle of a warzone. can't say it doesn't portray the experience accurately

this may be the most i've ever struggled with a game's controls, and that includes when i was a stupid child playing the Wii for the first time. i can't not laugh at how bad things are going. i'm sure a lot of mecha games, and especially early ones just lean very heavily into the "you are piloting a big big robot and it's very difficult" aspect control-wise. but even still i think it might just be bad

but there's a limit

i assumed F- was the worst i could get. i later got a G. for gundam

when Char drops onto the scene at the end of a mission it's meant to be like the boss battle, but instead i'm like ah thank god a straightforward target. i know what i have to attack and, to an extent, how to attack it. my only solace is that he looks like he's having as much trouble as i am. stage 3 of i don't even want to know how many was a nightmare

you don't know how much restraint it takes for me to not just make this a Funny Anime Dub Compilation. so far that has been where the bulk of my enjoyment of this game has come from

overnight i guess i evolved into a "newguy" and suddenly became much more competent. it was either that or Char did not show up for a few missions. but the biggest gamechanger? i uncovered the formidable power of the Gundam Hammer

alright it's not that bad. it was only really this weird corridor where i could do this, and the rest of the time i very much had to jump around and guard and strafe constantly. i know better than to cherrypick buggy moments to misrepesent a game's quality. <-- this is a lie i don't know this at all and i only mentioned it so people know it required skillful play for me to complete the game

cool can't wait bring it on. oh

very short game it turned out. there were three movies condensing the TV series and this went up to the end of the second movie, and then there's a second game that adapts the third movie. i say "adapt" but really it was just a collection of disjointed battles and scenes that i can't imagine convey much of a story if you don't already know what's happening. but who cares you get to pilot a big robot. it's not very fun but who cares you get to pilot a big robot

my reward for completing the campaign in which i was confined to playing solely as the Gundam, is a series of side missions that let me use other mobile suits!! it was just question marks on the main menu until i hit the credits and i feel as though that should not have been the case. people wanna play as their favorite guys dude. that's like only having Mario playable in Mario Kart until you complete all the cups

it's funny because just like in the show the Zeon side continuously introduces cooler guys to play as i complete more of their missions, but from the start the Federation has the Gundam, and the Gundam is always the best guy. so i complete one of their missions and it's like nowww you can play as the mass-produced gundam variant that sucks. now you can play as the ugly transformer. also after using the Gogg for one mission piloting the Gundam now feels like mario odyssey to me

completed all the extra missions and it says there are a few more mobile suits left but i don't know how to unlock them, and i can't look it up because i don't have internet today. in case you were wondering why i decided to continue playing this instead of doing something else. anyway that's this game. here's my newguy potential, if you even care