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Shogo: Mobile Armor Division Review:
The future is mecha!
My older brother used to play this game quite a lot way back some 20 years ago. It would be a game I'd see him play quite often and he really seemed to enjoy it. Eventually we had to format our drives and since by that point he already beat the game he didn't have much of a need or want to back it up anymore. And that led me to a hunt for this game that's been ongoing ever since. So for my initial attempt at the retro tech month challenge from November I started looking for games to put on CD and later install on the Windows XP computer. Everything I could remember, everything I knew I might wanna play and everything anyone would recommend. I'd even search through Reddit and Youtube for game ideas. And that's how I found it. The icon alone brought back so many memories I knew I had to get it on that PC and play through it, make my child self proud and reach a beautiful conclusion to this search. And so I did. And it was so worth it.
This game must've been so beautiful back in '98.
(Spoilers in this paragraph) The story centers around Sanjuro Makabe, a Mobile Combat Armor pilot and a commander in the United Corporate Authority during wartime. Sanjuro lost his brother, girlfriend and close friend during the war, or so he thinks, and that motivates him through much of the plot. His goal is to stop Gabriel, the leader of a terrorist organization and figure out the conspiracy and the truth that's been withheld from him all this time. Eventually you will have to make the decision between working with the terrorists or sticking by the military.
Anyway, the plot isn't too beefy and I'll be honest I don't blame you if you didn't care about the plot. It took me a while for me to care and I'm usually pretty attentive towards this stuff. The true bread and butter of this game is the artistic vision for sure.
We dig giant robots.
This game is a celebration of nerd culture and especially anime, namely mecha anime such as Patlabor (this one especially, look up the game's mech and compare it to the mech from Patlabor, it's very similar), Appleseed and Evangelion. This was made by an American team during the late 90s, right at the spot when anime was still a thing for uber nerds but the shift to becoming mainstream in the west was just around the corner as the new millenium was approaching. It's a product of love and passion by nerds, for nerds. It's so proud of its roots and what it pays homage to that you can't help but love it and respect it both as what it is and also as a time capsule into the anime culture of that period, a culture that in the west was heavily dominated by mecha anime. In 1998 Toonami was still a new concept and even when it was airing anime, it would almost exclusively air mecha anime as part of its programming, only pivoting to shows outside that niche towards the end of the 90s as they swapped their first mascot, Moltar, for a brand one; the iconic and memorable Tom.
Pictured: Moltar, the first Toonami mascot.
The game itself doesn't just pride itself as a mecha tribute but actively doubles as a mecha game. The game goes back and forth between segments where you play in first (or third) person as Sanjuro on foot and segments when you play as Sanjuro in his mech. They both play different and have a slightly different weapon arsenal as well as powers and abilities. There's decent variety with weapons, the game offering you anything from basic guns and machine guns to nuke launchers and weird space guns that send a beam into the air and while sometimes it doesn't do anything when it does hit it will cause a lot of damage. I personally preferred the more linear on-foot levels but I don't blame anyone for enjoying the more open ended mech levels more (and especially since it's so fun to just jump from building to building and see how high up you can get).
Not quite on top of the world.
The gameplay is fun. It's quite a difficult game by itself and the critical hit system can either save you or be your worst enemy due to enemy NPCs being able to critical hit you too which will drain your health big time. You can't set zooming as your right click command and there's a lot of small elements that either age the game or make it more frustrating than it needs to be but at the same time the game also features a quick save/quick load feature. I know some people look down on save-scumming but given the difficulty and the very frustrating positioning of certain enemies it does become unavoidable to a certain degree. Thankfully just now after I beat the game I find out there's a community patch that does a lot of rebalancing and makes certain mechanics easier. Here's a link for it: https://www.moddb.com/mods/shogo-stainless-steel
Another thing that is of note is that the game is quite janky especially compared to Half-Life which came out just a month later. Not all the jank is bad though but there are some technical issues that you may encounter so keep that in mind. The level layout is often pretty straightforward and only a couple times towards the end of the game things get somewhat more tricky (and it's not too hard to find your way out). Sneaking around and shooting your enemies while still hidden is the name of the game if you want to take minimal amounts of damage and I recommend you prepare to sneak around quite a lot (and get used to the fact you can't sneak on stairs). This is the last game you wanna go guns blazing on since you're about as vulnerable as your enemies are.
Seriously such a cool fight and what a cool mech too!
Another thing to note is that the game is an absolute struggle to run on modern operating systems. Even in Windows XP I've encountered a few problems and probably some extra jank. For the music to work for instance I had to set compatibility mode to Windows 98 and I heard it's quite a mess to run on Windows 10 or 11. Not quite sure about Linux but there's a native port for it from 2001. Can't confirm how good it may be but it sure exists.
Regardless I believe more people should give this game a shot. It's truly an underrated gem that deserves more attention and care. Even with its flaws it's a genuinely good and fun game that deserves to be acknowledged more especially by anime fans or fans of mecha in general. Even if certain elements may not be to your liking I believe you'll find plenty of enjoyment from the game.