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Best Games - Shogo Mobile Armour Division

Let's get this out of the way. Shogo is sort of broken. It is empty, ugly, and glitchy. Sure, it is 15 years old, but it looked pretty poor at the time too. The plot is confusing and largely unnecessary. Movement is floaty, and combat is loose and chaotic. Shogo is also incredibly fun.

Shogo is a heavily anime influenced FPS. You would think that the developers would be interested in only lifting the best, most exciting elements from your typical anime. Nope, Monolith went all in and wrote a convoluted plot with too many characters and over dramatic plot twists. It doesn’t skimp on puerile humour and comedic levels of action and destruction. Shogo is as much a parody of anime as it is a celebration. The developers knew exactly what they were making and went for it.

First and foremost, Shogo is a shooter. You play half of the missions as a man on foot running around shooting at bad guys. The other half, you pilot an enormous robotic war machine, but you also shoot bad guys. Both halves are very different, but equally fun.

While on foot, combat is very unforgiving. Contact with an enemy can end with one bullet. Usually, not in your favour. You have to be careful, methodical, and accurate. Attempt to fight more than a couple of enemies at a time, and you will lose. Encounters tend to be more like solving ever evolving puzzles, than improvising with the environment and tools that you have available.

In the giant robot armour you are a walking fountain of destruction. Only other Mobile Combat Armour pose any real threat. All of the weapons are mammoth and devastating. Your enemies carry similarly ridiculous firepower, and your mech suit can feel a bit squishy at times, but  mostly you just skate speedily forward riding the wave of explosions. There is some sort of systemic alchemy at play here that keeps the game consistently satisfying.

In a game where it gets just about every other superficial aspect so totally wrong, Shogo manages to get two very different styles of first person shooter play so incredibly bang on right. Shogo earns its spot as one of the best games.