Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, or Shogo: MAD, as abbreviated is a very unique first person shooter game that came to the computer gaming market in October of 1998. It offers up an oldschool or "boomer shooter" as we seem to call them nowadays type of experience with the eyecatching stylings inspired by Japanese animations like Patlabor, Gundam, Appleseed or Evangelion. It's an interesting and unique look at an early take on an anime mech game through the lens of a western videogame studio. It is not a game that has aged well and much like its challenged development cycle it is a challenge to get up and running on modern computers. On one hand going back to it presents a mid to bad experience however on the other it is a sort of one of a kind novelty. Like the videogame version of a historical museum piece. Its weird, quirky, clunky but maybe those are the things that make it special. But also Shogo is one of the most pain in the butt games I've tried to play in recent years. While I did manage to play into credit scroll, I was VERY ready for this one to be over with sooner solely based on its bugs and crashing problems. I know part of this is because the game is old and doesn't get along with modern computers but regardless that makes it REALLY hard to go back to in our current day and age. Also I did follow some user guides on player made patches and setups to hopefully deter these problems, but they still unfortunately persisted. So here's a shortlist of the sorts of things I encountered. The game crashing, basically constantly. When it would crash it would turn off font smoothing for my entire computer. To turn this back on I'd have to go through the start wizard thing, every time. Sometimes the game wouldn't launch or would crash while launching. Characters floating, spinning and shooting during cutscenes, floors and walls turning black or... multiplying? Sprint button not working? Parts of the model of the gun in the middle of the screen clipping through itself. The game REALLY needs some help if you want to play it on modern hardware and this plays really heavy into a huge negative. The current rightsholder, I guess the publisher Interplay? Actually RAISED the price of this game back in November for some reason. Literally doubled its price. A 27 year old game, that has been re-released for the digital market for at least 16 years got an arbitrary price DOUBLING in 2025. WHY? They seemingly didn't go through and patch it in any capacity, no restored or added content, no further support, but a price increase. Not just an increase but a complete 100% increase? From 10 to 20 dollars? That really sucks. full video review here; https://youtu.be/JsPRU1wFMgM?si=FYHGgisgyzO3AI6h

[h1]This thing needs a remaster ASAP.[/h1] Whenever i get to speak about a game by Monolith, the first thing i usually say is that they are probably my second-favorite game developer of all time, right behind Looking Glass Studios. Basically, almost every Monolith shooter in existence is a highlight of the genre, if not one of the very best shooters of all time, as is the case with F.E.A.R. and Aliens versus Predator 2. Even if some of their titles are slightly overrated, they usually have at least some very wacky and unique twists in their gameplay, presentation or artstyle that make them special (e. g. No one lives forever). The only Monolith game i ever played that was below average was Tron 2.0, but even that game was at least visually interesting. But enough gushing over Monolith. With that background, let‘s look at Shogo Mobile Armor Division, one of their very first games. And, as expected, it’s quite fun. The special Monolith knack here is, even though the gameplay doesn‘t differ at all, that you switch between missions on foot and missions in a combat mech, and the whole thing has this entertaining manga anime artstyle to it. Even as early as the late nineties, Monolith games just stood out. For that time, the sound, voice-acting and music are a lot more than decent and the gameplay is solid run-n-gun. It does feel a bit dated, considering that Half-Life came out a month later, but hey, few games can be on the same level as Half-Life, right? The only sour thing about the presentation might be grafics. Compared to Quake 2 or Unreal, which came out several months earlier, Shogo Mobile Armor Division looks like sh*t, but it’s not so bad that it makes it unplayable and since the game is rather fun, you‘ll get used to the blocky models and general lack of detail in the textures rather quickly. In conclusion, Shogo Mobile Armor Division sits perfectly comfortable among it‘s younger Monolith friends, and if you like the other Monolith games chances are that you‘ll enjoy Shogo, too. The only truly negative thing about it is that it‘s a pain to get running on modern systems, but there is an excellent guide right here in the guide section to make it happen and it‘s not too complicated and the game really is totally worth it. Nevertheless, i guarantee that once it runs, it runs without stuttering, bugs or glitches, but it WILL crash on a regular basis. It wasn‘t too bad for me, but if you were looking for your main proper no-go reason to not buy this, here it is. Other little flaws, for example that you can‘t reload your weapon manually, that the story gets muddled and confusing half way through and that even on easy difficulty it can be a pretty rough and unforgiving game for people who are not used to 90s shooter gameplay and grew up on regenerating health, are comparatively minor and rather few and far between. With all that said, Shogo Mobile Armor Division is one of those games that show how little grafics matter as long as the gameplay is fun. It‘s a bit short (a handful of hours maximum on easy difficulty), but it’s straight forward, super fast-paced run-n-gun with satisfying beefy weapons and no frustrating cryptic bs all the way through. If it weren‘t for the completely outdated visuals and the inconvenience to make it run, i‘d have zero problems even giving this a 6/8 maybe. Monolith, you glorious bastards, rest in peace. Now, somebody call Nightdive to give this game the remaster it deserves. ______________________________ SHOGO MOBILE ARMOR DIVISION Genre: First-Person-Shooter Release: Q4 1998 ( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this. ( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all. ( ) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks. ( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks. ( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks. (X) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan. ( ) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this. ( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize. ( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.

NIGHTDIVE, FIX THIS GAME AND MY LIFE IS YOURS

you can kill children in this game

Coolest Gundam game that isnt a official Gundam game That said massive asterisk that the game desperately needs a remaster due to issues on modern systems and is a bit jank/unbalanced. but if your willing to put up with some of that bullsh*t then Monolith (rip) really knocking it out of the park again with this unique and fun FPS.

С одной стороны, я словил неслабый такой приступ ностальгии, поскольку искал эту игру более 20 лет. С другой, бл, чтобы поиграть, нужно уверенно потанцевать с бубном, да и то, проблемы это не все решает. Душевно, отдаёт "теми самыми" шутерами, под конец постоянные переигровки обеспечены. Вот этот ремейк я бы хотел увидеть, но помянем монолит и серию.

Keep it in your pants, pal!