Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

aka: Heavy Metal, Riot: Mobile Armor, Yarost': Vosstanie na Kronuse
Moby ID: 1141
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Sanjuro is a commander in the army of United Corporate Authority and a pilot of a Mobile Combat Armor (a giant mech) in the far future. The UCA is fighting the Fallen, a terrorist organization. This conflict has its victims: Sanjuro's brother, best friend and girlfriend all died while completing a mission years ago, and only recently he has been somewhat succeeding in putting the past behind him. Now Sanjuro is given a mission to find and kill Gabriel, a new leader of the Fallen. But during this assignment, ghosts of the past will come back to haunt him.

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is a first-person shooter that incorporates ideas from anime and the MechWarrior series. On some levels, the player controls Sanjuro while he is on foot, infiltrating enemy buildings and fighting with handheld firearms. Sanjuro can find health power-ups, more powerful weapons and ammo. Both Sanjuro and the enemies will randomly score critical his, which not only cause more damage, but also replenish a small portion of health.

On other levels, the player pilots one of the four available MCAs, which differ a little in characteristics. This giant mech can walk, jump and crouch just like a human being, and controlling it is very similar to controlling Sanjuro. The player guides this colossus through city districts swarming with enemy soldiers and mechs. It is also possible to transform the mech into a vehicle, though it can not defend itself in that state.

The story progression is linear for the most part. However, at one point, the player is prompted to make a choice that will affect the rest of the plot and the ending.

Spellings

  • Ярость. Восстание на Кронусе - Russian spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

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Game Designer and Lead Level Designer
Lead Game Engineer
Lead LithTech Engineer
LithTech Sound System and Tools Engineer
Lead Texture Artist and Designer
Level and Game Designer
Lead 3D Animator
Game Engineer
Producer
Level Designer
Mecha Designer and Texture Artist
LithTech Engineer
Texture Artist
Lead Audio Designer
Weapon and Character Designs by
Audio Composer
Audio Technician
Additional LithTech and Shogo Engineering by
Additional 3D Animation
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 72 ratings with 5 reviews)

More Shooter like than Mech Sim, Great game!

The Good
The game's most impressive feature is its anime style.From its Japanese rock music intro, to its humoristic ending anime is everywhere. All characters in the game are drawn in an anime fashion, the robots when they move have the foot stomp sound. When characters notice you there is that sun clang ever prevalent in anime. The Mech designs are top notch, enemies and good guys look great. The good guys get to choose 3 types of Mech, and if you don't like the one you have, you can change it during certain points in the game. The Mech weapons are the ones that really shine. The Mech weapons includes Pulse Cannons, Sniper Rifles, Lasers, and this Nuke weapon called the 'Red Riot'. Lastly, it is extremely fun to go around in the Mech stomping on infantry, and destroying billboards and automobiles. The human weapons also have cool reload and pull out animations and sounds. Oh ya, the game is also filled with sarcastic dialogue by the protagonist, and one character is for purely comedic purposes.

The Bad
There is nothing I really didn't like about the game. I think the story was to cliche. Of course it is the typical family vs. duty type storyline where the main character has a brother and a girlfriend lost in battle. Also, you know to soon of who the main bad guy is, and who is everyone else. The scripting deals mostly with go to one location and someone or something talks. There is no terrain deformation like in Half-life. Lastly, while I said the Mech weapons are impressive, the human weapons are pretty typical.

The Bottom Line
The game is basically an FPS. The Mech part is no Mechwarrior combat, it sticks more to FPS. The game is pretty easy for most shooter fans, and has the anime feel.

Windows · by Mister_T (15) · 2000

Has lots of cool things but Monolith just couldn't put it all together.

The Good
Plenty of good, pulse-pounding action comes packed in Shogo, an fps that gives you the chance to fight enemies both on foot or aboard a gigantic mecha and rain hell over cities and military complex... cool innit?

The game is a standard plot-driven fps game, even if it plays by missions. You have your share of scripted sequences as well as other plot-enhancing features like different plot threads (which can lead you to two very different game endings as well as different missions) and other gimmicks.

As I mentioned before, the action takes center stage in this game, so you can expect fast and furious fps fights courtesy of the Lithtech engine. The engine may not be the flashiest thing out there (especially in this early incarnation of it) but it does deliver fluid animation and fast graphics with lots of explosions and lightning effects. An interesting feat included in the engine is the real-time hit area detection which means that enemies react accordingly to your hits depending on where do you hit them just like in Blood 2. Though this may spell interesting strategic possibilities the fact is that it's just an aesthetic touch, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! You can juggle your opponents in the air with multiple hits, or get quick laughs as you hit them in the knees and watch them do the famed "machine gun cha-cha". That coupled with the amount of enemies and gang-bang type of firefights gets you a fantastically hyperkinetic experience that goes hand in hand with Shogo's outlandish animé world.

Of course, when you take the seat of one of the 3 mechas, the game takes a slightly different edge and you play in a much more over-the top enviroment where you can make gigantic jumps, wield absolutely devastating weapons that can level entire cities, and generally raise some major hell in the name of virtual entertainment. Yay! The mecha-segments are also the ones that feature some of the best level designs in the game, a great level has you jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper while shooting down enemy mechas as you try to get to the other side of the city, and an easy but dramatic fight takes place on the main building in an eery construction yard... very nice, quite a refreshment from the standard fps sequences of "fetch key, go kill gonzo, repeat".

The animé angle is pretty amusing when coupled to an fps game, and it's well implemented too since obviously the developers knew what makes the genre tick and capitalized on most of it's common points. The background storyline deals with some typical war among some military factions in the future, but as in most good animés this is just a backdrop for the personal struggles of the main characters, their sappy melodramas, their feelings of guilt, teen angst, etc. etc. I know I make it sound like crap, but it's a great capture of the "generic animé spirit" if that spirit is crap well, that's another issue...

The Bad
The game is just a mess. Save for the few points I mentioned up there the whole thing just seems hastily stitched together. It's not that bad really, but I get the feeling the guys at Monolith realized that an animé-based game fps would be a cool idea so they bothered to research all the art, licensed the world's crappiest J-pop song (as per standard animé requirements) and wrote a typically entertaining melodrama-in-war story that fitted the genre, but didn't actually put that much thinking in the general construction of the game. The levels themselves hardly ever make sense from a gameflow perspective, and they fall to some of the worst cliches ever in the genre (the last level if you choose to go against your superiors is a throwback to fps hell for instance). The mission design is often inconsistent and just boils down to "shoot the hell out of everything" and the AI is terribly predictable and stupid (especially that of the "bosses").

To further prove that the developers spent all the time thinking of cool things to jam in their game and not how the game used them you have a collection of genuinely good concepts that are blatantly wasted for no reason! ie: you have some stealthy weapons, but the game always forces you into head-on confrontations, so what is the use for them? When piloting mechas you can transform them into some weird-ass vehicles that only make you move slightly faster, but since you lose control of your weapons and there are no situations that call for you to "run to x place" or "escape x thing" what's the use?? Want more? By the 3rd/4th mission you'll already have the full, yes FULL, arsenal for your mecha!! (well, except for that Red Riot thingie that you get at the end)... what's the point of being able to choose from eight or so super kickass weapons if they all just fall on your ass from the get-go? This may sound stupid, but remember how gaining each weapon was a dramatic and super thrilling moment in games like Half-Life or Doom?? And each one was instantly cleverly introduced to you so that you could carefully experiment and find out their pros and cons? Well, Shogo just throws the whole arsenal at you! Have fun! You just start choosing the ones that seem more powerful and work your way downwards! Geez... and the worst part is that the mecha weapons are incredibly cool! And speaking of Mechas, why didn't they introduce at least some differences in gameplay or interface? Would it have killed them to provide a HUD or something to remind you that you are actually in an armored behemoth and not just playing the same fps game only in gigantor-mode and with different textures? Man, what a waste....

Oh, and lest I forget: This early versions of the LithTech engine had some major issues with some 3D cards. I hardly think they are a problem nowadays, but they were one to me in it's time, with dissapearing walls, textures, critters, etc... Don't say I didn't warn you!

The Bottom Line
Shogo has a lot of cool elements and creative juice, but it doesn't seem to pull it down into the reality of it's own game. The game just feels like a loose collection of ideas and concepts, whenever they do merge together you get a glimpse of Shogo's potential, specially with it's fierce and intense firefights and Mecha action. But for the most part it's just an averagely entertaining game that's hard to recommend in the face of all the other superior games out there.

And that song... THAT HELLISH SONNGGAAARARHRHH!!!!!!!

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

MechWarrior meets Quake

The Good
Being a hardcore FPS fan, and a BattleMech game enthusiast, I was excited when I got my hands on Shogo...Although the game delivers everything that it promises, I couldn't help but be a little bit disappointed with the game...

But the good things first (don't get me wrong, there's plenty of them)...

The storyline is one of the best there is in a Mech game...actually, its probably the only Mech game with a story, (MechWarrior, Earth/Star Siege? all game, no story) ...The in game cutscenes, and triggers really work to advance the storyline...

The weapons effects and the weapons themselves are pretty cool...especially the energy weapons, and the bullgut missile launcher...

Some of the level designs are extremely cool...there's one level where there is a lot of wind, and any ballistic weapons will be thrown off course...I didn't notice it at first...the game is full of these little subtlties...the levels in the city was extremely cool too...stomping around a city in a huge mech squishing cars really makes my day...

The constant switching between mech and person mode was kinda interesting, though there is really no difference except for the fact that you cannot double jump as a human...

The controls to move a mech around is much more intuitive thanother mech games...It uses FPS controls...easy for everyone to get into, but sometimes it doesn't relay the feeling to being inside a huge mech...

There is some puzzle solving, some action, some good old fashioned mech duels...Shogo gives you everything in a neatly wrapped package...

The Multiplayer is pretty fun, the most fast paced mech deathmatch ever to hit the PC...

The Bad
Some of the dialogue was cheesy, and some borders the annoying territory...

The number of different mechs you can choose: 3...WOW!!! you mean I get to choose between THREE WHOLE MECHS?...compared to the huge number of mechs you can choose from in MechWarrior and Earth/Star Siege, three mechs in a mech game really seems like a microscopic amount...

The melee weapons is totally useless, as is the vehicle mode...you can hardly ever run out of ammo in the game, especially when many enemies can be put down with a few shots...by the time you finished the game, you will have left behind enough ammo to outfit the entire US army, I'm exaggerating of course, but there seem to be an unlimited amount of ammo in the game...This takes away much of the regular FPS challenge of being careful and conserving ammunition...and whats the point of turning yourself into a vehicle, especially an unarmed one???

Monolith seems to think that a game with huge amounts of blood is good...if you snipe a human when you are in mech mode, gallons of blood seems to spurt everywhere...it seems like the entire content of the human you just killed was blood¡KAlso, the total lack of fear of people when looking at the business end of a laser cannon on a huge mech is quite unrealistic...they stand there and try to blast you with their pea shooters while you loom in front of them more than fifty times their height...Aren't they supposed to run away??? The puny little rooftop snipers are one of the most annoying aspects of the game...

The AI in Shogo has a lot of problems...For example, you can empty your entire gun at an enemy from far away, and the guy standing next to him would continue to stand there, looking into space...sometimes, even the guy you're shooting give no reaction of just having been sniped at all...Last but not least, your mech seems to be able to handle much more punishment than the other mechs...the enemies can snipe at you all day long, before you die, but a sniper bullet or two to any enemy mech can get you a kill, or sometimes even one critical hit...

Some game developers place insane amounts of enemies on the map to make the game more difficult, while others make platform jumping puzzles that would make tarzan tremble...Shogo doesn't do either, and I praise Monolith for it...but it is too easy...to many hardcore FPS fans, the game shouldn't take more than a few hours...you can try beating the game using three different mechs, but other than that, the replayablility isn't much...

The Bottom Line
Good for two or three weeks of fun, even the novelty from the multiplayer aspect wears off...after that, Shogo sort of just finds its way back on the shelf...a good game for short spurts of gaming...but don't expect it to last as long as Diablo, Quake or Starcraft...

Windows · by MadCat (53) · 2000

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Review of Shogo: Mobile Armored Division Eric Brewster Mar 2, 2012

Trivia

If you keep scrolling past the credits you'll find some interesting messages. Some are just plain dumb (Shogo rulz, monolith rulz, etc...) but some, like the ones that tell of all the different names the game had (heavy metal, Metal Tek, Riot, etc.) are quite funny to read.

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Related Sites +

  • Planet Shogo
    fan-site with everything from game info to cheats, editing and mods (archived - 2005)

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1141
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

Linux added by chirinea. Amiga added by Kabushi. Macintosh added by Martin Smith.

Additional contributors: Zovni, Apogee IV, tarmo888, Ivan Napreenko, Stratege.

Game added March 26, 2000. Last modified February 13, 2024.