Following up on its previous release of the anime-inspired title DICE, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Never Ending Tomorrow is another disappointing game from the same publisher. Similarly to DICE, the latter contains interesting concepts but fails to use them to create an engaging experience, and in the end Never Ending Tomorrow proves to be a repetitive, uninspired, and downright sub-par title that could only be recommended to the most ardent fans of the series.
"A repetitive, uninspired, and downright sub-par title..."
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Set in the year C.E. 70, the conflict of Never Ending Tomorrow arises when tensions between two groups of the human race, the genetically altered Coordinators and the unmodified Naturals, result in a full-scale war between the Earth Alliance and the ZAFT forces. Though the initial backdrop is fairly appealing, there isn’t much more that can be understood easily, since the storyline starts to become confusing beyond this premise. The game attempts to create an articulate story, but all it manages to do by stringing together cutscenes from the anime is produce an incoherent plot that is difficult to follow.
As implied in the game’s title, you control Gundam mobile suits in order to complete your objectives. The game allows you to play various missions from the perspectives of Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala, both of whom are under the command of opposing forces. Kira’s campaign contains fifteen missions, and Athrun’s contains eleven, but the basic gameplay is the same throughout, giving one factor for the game’s monotony.
The Gundam suits can fly quickly with their thrusters, create combos while combating enemies up close, and fire projectiles at opponents from a distance. To top it all off, they can lock on to multiple enemies and evade attacks efficiently. Such a wide variety of abilities would seem to translate into an entertaining game, but unfortunately this isn’t the case. Never Ending Tomorrow gets repetitive because of the fact that you have to destroy enemies using the same methods over and over again; you first target and lock on to your enemy, then either shoot at him or fly close enough so you can punch and kick him. You’ll occasionally be able to use one of your Gundam’s special attacks, one ranged and one for close up, but otherwise the sequence repeats continuously, essentially turning the game into a beat ’em up. All in all, it’s a shame that Never Ending Tomorrow is so simple in mechanics, because it would have been much better if only the combat were made sharper.
The visuals could have been crisper as well. The in-game graphics aren’t anything impressive, and the environments are dull and bland. To make things worse, Never Ending Tomorrow suffers from constant drops in its framerate, making for annoyingly persistent slowdown issues. On a lighter note, the Gundam suits are animated fairly well, but overall the game’s graphics disappoint like just about everything else.
"Never Ending Tomorrow didn’t efficiently capitalize on its numerous interesting concepts."
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It stands to mention that the sound of Never Ending Tomorrow is slightly better than the game’s other aspects. The soundtrack has a few well-composed themes, the voice acting is effective, and, while not spectacular, the sound effects are passable. Even so, this solid category of the game’s production values makes the rest of the game seem that much more of a letdown.
Not helping matters much is Never Ending Tomorrow’s poor value. Including cutscenes, both the Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala storylines can easily be completed within four hours, and there’s little incentive to replay them, save for collecting more seed points (the game’s form of currency) to buy extras such as a Gundam unit viewer and a few other characters. Other missions spotlighting different characters, a versus mode, and a few other survival modes don’t increase the game’s value significantly, either.
Simply put, Never Ending Tomorrow didn’t efficiently capitalize on its numerous interesting concepts, and in effect created a dull and unexciting experience. Even if you’re a fan of the series, you’ll probably want to consider passing up on a purchase of the game, and if you’ve never played any of the Mobile Suit Gundam games up to this point, you don’t need to start with this title.
