After starting New Gundam Breaker, I wasn’t expecting to see the ending credits just two hours later, with only a single failed mission to my pilot’s name. So straightforward is this 2018 third-person slasher/shooter that I did wonder for a moment whether it was intended for a younger age group than the enticing cover art suggests. At a mere £5 though – the current price at a certain pre-owned focused high street retailer – I can’t say I was left feeling shortchanged.
New Gundam Breaker isn’t based on a current anime or movie adaptation, but rather a celebration of gunpla – the hobby of constructing and painting Gundam models.
You’re initially presented with a single model with default parts. Then over the course of several missions you’re able to acquire new gear – either through destroying different models and depositing their body kits at drop-off points, or by simply purchasing new kit from a catalogue via the main menu. It’s also from here that your Gundam can be customised with various paint before being posed on some 30-odd backgrounds.
As you’re controlling a mere model, missions take place in super-sized offices, model shops, and similar locations. Although confusingly, there are a few sci-fi locations too, including what appears to be the surface of the moon. The tutorial is easy enough to follow – save for the baffling decision to use black text on dithered grey dialogue boxes – yet the UI is nevertheless confusing, with the screen partly obscured by numerous button combo prompts for each action. Once you’ve mastered shooting, slashing and boosting though, you’re all set.
Mission objectives are repetitive to the extreme, seemingly doled out at random. The aforementioned battle arenas are boxy affairs, in which enemies appear as and when mission objectives call for it. Some objectives can even be beaten with little input, falling back on your two AI controlled cohorts to carry out the dirty work while you collect parts and blast open containers. Occasionally, a boss-like character will appear, usually just as a mission is coming to an end. They go down easily with a few well-aimed charged shots. Even if you fall in battle the mission continues regardless, respawning back into the action a few seconds later.
Incidentally, my single mission failure occurred due to a boss spawning on an upper platform connected by spaceship wreckage. By the time I discovered their whereabouts, the clock had mere seconds left, resulting in a full mission restart. When the ending credits rolled, I had twenty ‘S Ranks’ to my name, with the remaining appearing easily obtainable.
While the ability to customise your model is neat, even extending to different paint types, that’s all New Gundam Breaker has going for it aside from some nice visual flourishes. I can’t say I was too surprised to discover the paltry 43% Metacritic score it received…which also goes some way to explaining why it was only £5.