// PC GAMER — GAMING
Gundam Rogue Orbit gave me a sick whip sword, but held back the one thing I want most in a mech game
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I didn't know I could have an entitled opinion about giant anime robots until I played a preview of Gundam Rogue Orbit, but it turns out I can. I'm mad because they gave me a Gundam with a whip sword straight out of Bloodborne (if Gundam hadn't actually gotten there first in the mid-'90s).
To be clear, I'm not mad at the whip sword itself. I'm ecstatic about the whip sword. It's exactly the kind of esoteric weapon that suggests Rogue Orbit has a real shot at being the kind of action game that I want out of Gundam—one with a bit more melee crunch and nuance than they tend to offer. But I can't help but look this gift sword in the mouth, because months after revealing the game, the Gundam team are still holding back hands-on with the bit I want to see most: a damn customization screen.
Why couldn't I look through a short list of weapons whitelisted for the demo build and have a chance to think: "Whip sword? Yes, I'll be having some of that." The fact that you can customize your mech in Rogue Orbit isn't secret: there's a screenshot of the menu on the freaking Steam page! Here's what it looks like:
That looks cool. I would've loved to spend at least a few seconds pondering stats like "close-range power" and "output" before deciding a 60-foot-tall robot using a whip to channel its inner Belmont while fighting aliens is far too dope to resist, numbies be damned.
Demos always have to strike a balance between showing too much and not enough, risking a confusing amount of up-front complexity or a slice so thin it misses some of the fatty goodness that adds flavor. I played about 30 minutes of Rogue Orbit, which was all action, accompanied by plenty of anime-tinged voiceover about the aliens(?) called "The Apocalypse" that made me think I will probably not pay much attention to anything that happens in this story.
On the edginess scale, though, Rogue Orbit's got nothing on the likes of "XXXG-01D2 Gundam Deathscythe Hell" from Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz—you can practically feel the impending turn of the millennium oozing from every letter in that cursed name. Rogue Orbit may not be the politically tinged deliberation on war I love from the best Gundam shows, but that's okay—it's doing something different, and the combo-heavy action immediately made me feel like the game was on to something.
Rogue Orbit skews a bit more action RPG than Devil May Cry—the combos are just a few repeated button presses, and much of your damage comes from throwing in active skills which each have their own cooldowns. Holding a trigger and tapping Square on a PlayStation pad made my Gundam swirl the whip sword around in a 360 degree frenzy, catching anyone nearby in a flurry of quick hits.
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Another weapon, the Sword Lance, almost felt Monster Hunter-inspired, building up a unique meter every time I performed a heavy lunging attack mid-dodge. That meter could then be spent to spawn a "Beam Phalanx" of laser-spewing orbs.