Weatherby (@weatherby.bsky.social)

Weatherby's review of Gungriffon II | Backloggd Look, I'll accept I'm not a good pilot. Some of that is innate talent, or a lack thereof, and some of it is lifestyle. You can't expect me to roll out of bed after a restful 4 hours of slumber and cruise around in a High-MAC without a little collateral damage. At least Gungriffon II - which is the <a rel='nofollow' target='_blank' href='https://backloggd.com/u/Weatherby/review/4230856/'>sequel to Gungriffon</a>, if you didn't know - has twin stick support, though all this means is I now have slightly more control of my mech as I careen backwards at top speed, destroying trees, farmland and houses while being chased by five pissed off AWGSes. Both of the Gungriffons are a little too complex to comfortably map to a standard six-button Saturn controller, and while that does make them a pain to play, it is nevertheless authentic to the experience of trying to figure out how a walking tank works. I'd wager if mechs were real, you'd have at least a few years at the start of their deployment where most pilot deaths are the result of user error. The real aces are those that mastered Gungriffon, or the absolute freaks that had one of those table-sized Steel Battalion pads. Everyone else is accidentally flipping the eject switch and launching themselves into a field of anti-air fire. The twin stick's layout is a lot more sensible by comparison, even if it's less streamlined than Gundam: Blue Destiny or Virtual On. The left stick is used to move forward, back, and strafe, with double-taps locking you into progressively higher speeds, tapping in the opposite direction to ramp back down. The right stick handles your camera and weapons, of which you have four that can be configured to your liking in the pre-mission screen, although you cannot carry more than two of the same weapon type. I get it, that's fair, I think I could kill anything on this Earth with 40 anti-tank missiles. I think I could kill God. This is a much better layout overall, but because of the way the twin-stick's switches are set up, it's a lot more difficult to finesse your aim, especially when you're dealing with a dozen teeny tiny tanks that are pelting you with rockets and knocking your camera off-center. Dialing your reticle in on a AWGS that's running <a rel='nofollow' target='_blank' href='https://youtu.be/A2_w-QCWpS0?si=-s-HmQnxZOdsqzwN&t=44'>serpentine maneuvers</a> is like threading a moving needle, as each click of the right stick moves the camera by a set increment that's far larger than a press of the d-pad. At least one mission pushed me to use a six-button controller so I wouldn't blow through all my ammo by missing my shots. I won't fault Gungriffon II for that, because it's more to do with the twin-sticks and how they're constructed. The game itself is great, even if you're playing on a controller, and I really like how it balances simulation complexity with arcade-style missions. It's as challenging as the first, though the pacing is generally more even, and being able to change your loadout and deploy a "wingman" to help draw fire (let's be real, they aren't killing anything stronger than a tank) gives the player some extra control over the difficulty. My only gripe is that there's a few too many "protect [X] until the timer runs out" missions. There's not a whole lot of mission variety, even for a game that's only 8 levels long. But with those 8 levels down, I'm now through all the Saturn games that natively support the twin-stick. The verdict: Kiiinda worth it? All of the games I've played with it are pretty good, with or without dropping $90 on a big, heavy, clunky peripheral. That includes Gungriffon II, which is worth checking out even if you only plan to experience it with a normal Saturn controller, or like, in emulation with a Tengenaria Lite or Logitech F710 or whatever the fuck people lean on these days. It's not as good as the Blue Destiny Gundam games, or Virtual On (what is?) but in a lineup completely dominated by mech games and mech games only, it has its own identity and is a great game to spend a couple hours on. https://backloggd.com/u/Weatherby/review/4439923/