Review by: Chris Harding
Published: October 8, 1998

It’s amazing how time has a way of making man look foolish. In the early thirteenth century people who thought the Earth revolved around the sun were considered morons. By the late fourteen hundreds people had accepted the truth, but struggled with the notion that the world was not flat, but round. Although not nearly on the same level, we gaming journalists have had a tendency to make these same type of blunders, believing in something so much we proclaim its divinity, only to replace it with the next revelation a month later. I don’t know how many times I’ve read in some magazine that gaming has reached a state of celestial salvation with the latest 3D engine, or that gaming will never be the same due to some mip-map-anti-alias-render-dithering-api technique that’s just been incorporated into the newest release of Direct3D, just to have it replaced by something better a few short weeks later. In a way I guess it is the nature of our industry, an industry where technology seems to move faster than ideas.

A few months ago, when I previewed Monolith’s 3D action/adventure Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the question was this: would the game’s new approach and new ideas to an already established genre make it a innovation, or an aberration? Before we really get started answering that question it would be a good idea for you to read over an article written by our resident Editor in Chief, Emil Pagliarulo, titled
3D Game Deathmatch — Let the Battle Begin! Now that you’re properly prepared, let’s get down to business. Shogo is a 3D action/adventure game in a classic Japanese anime setting, and the first title to use Monolith’s much talked about 3D powerhouse Lithtech engine. Perhaps the most important innovation is that the game combines two very distinct styles of gameplay: first- and third-person shooter action a la Jedi Knight, and first- and third-person Mecha combat, a la…well, Shogo!

There’s no doubt that ninety-nine percent of you have already heard a lot about Shogo. You’ve read the previews, played the demo, and probably seen enough screenshots that if you put them in a slide show and flipped real fast, you just might have a movie.
It’s called hype, and the machine at Monolith has done a damn good job in creating it. I’ve stated it before, though: hype can be both a good thing and a bad one. It all comes down to whether or not you can back it up.

Backup is something there is plenty of in Shogo. You see, rather than taking the role of some brute stuck on an alien world, charged with annihilating everything in sight, you are part of a team, a unit. You’re a Commander in the CMC, a military organization akin to Wing Commander’s Confed, except you’re not a pilot, at least not a pilot of spaceships. While the CMC does use space fighters in its efforts to keep the peace, your unit specializes in ground warfare, and the use of MCAs, or mechanized combat assault units. These 30-40 ft. battle monsters, which are equipped with devastating armor and weapons, are used in all facets of the ground war. At the beginning of the game the CMC is at war, and has been for a long time. The enemy is a mysterious group called the Fallen, comprised mostly of renegade soldiers and defectors, denouncing the CMC and pledging loyalty to a being known as Gabriel. Loyalty and influence amongst the Fallen are their greatest strengths. Their numbers are growing with each battle, and each day more and more of the CMC’s finest are lost to the influences of Gabriel. Compounding this threat is the fight for control over a substance known as Kato, a raw material that is mined from the planet Cronus. When burned at subatomic levels, Kato creates enough energy for super luminal travel. The energy from Kato is necessary for the continued exploration and expansion of the CMC, and whoever controls Kato will certainly have the upper hand in the war.

If Shogo stopped there, and sent you through a series of levels where you fought thousands of Fallen soldiers for control of Kato, it would have been a good game. But it didn’t stop there, not by a long shot. Shogo doesn’t really use levels in the traditional sense, and I wouldn’t classify progression in the game as mission-based, either. Instead, the game progresses much more like an RPG, or even better an interactive adventure. I know that term is well overused, but in this case it makes sense.