At a recent event in a Akiba Sofmap, the upcoming Steel Battalion Heavy Armor was available to play by members of the general (Japanese) public. Bearing in mind that a demo is also available online, it’s now fair to say that our initial concerns about the game have in fact developed into fully fledged and pretty justified facepalms. The video below does help to illustrate some of the problems the game has but when you actually pilot one of these bastards yourself you realise that it genuinely has “issues”. From Software, as far as we’re concerned, have just been helpless pawns in all this. We can also only begin to feel the pain the likes of Hifumi Kouno and the rest of the original development team on the first Xbox game must be feeling right about now. In any case, we’ll be definitely reviewing this puppy come its imminent release in the next few weeks.

What with this year’s E3 almost upon us and that means trailers. Hawken is no exception, as it’s clear their new marketing budget has been blown on a swanky live action trailer (shown below). PR crap aside, the last gameplay trailer (circa this year’s PAX) is looking pretty good. Though there’s still a crazy amount of v-sync issues going on, what the deuce is up with that? Functionally we’re still on the fence with Hawken though, whilst it does look pretty none of the gameplay we’ve seen or heard about has us really excited yet. Only time will tell and we’ll all know if the game is any good come the end of the year.

What seems to be the entire newly animated opening movie for the Zone of the Enders HD Collection is now available online for everyone to see. Animated by Sunrise, it was specially commissioned for the new HD collection. There’s also a brief interview with Kojima online too, though this more importantly shows the new HD gameplay in action. Both videos are linked below.

Finally, after much wait, the greatly anticipated 2nd Super Robot Wars OG has had its release details finally made public. Much of the fan speculation on places like 2ch was that the game would be released at the end of the year. Well, it seems that they were pretty much spot on as the game is slated for a Winter release. This can also mean it may slip to January next year though. This will be the first current generation 2D SRW game and if you’ve forgotten how gorgeous it will look, then take a gander at the lovely HD promo videos below. In short, we can’t wait for this!

Updated: Famitsu now has all the details online too.

As previously mentioned, the Mamoru Oshii directed live action trailer for Steel Battalion Heavy Armor received its first preview. Naturally this pretty much shows Oshii’s predilection towards gratuitous gun porn. Following on from this there’s now also a rather blandly narrated “how to” trailer on the game. As always this doesn’t fill us with confidence as the game is increasingly looking like a pile of steaming bobbins. Either way, we’ll know for sure come the end of June when the game is finally released.

In a nice new update on May 29th, Gundam Extreme Versus Full Boost will have the suitably villainous CB-0000G/C Reborns Gundam added to the playable roster. Due to its Tau drive config, it can only activate its Trans-Am system once. Though we still love the fact that Ribbons Allmark’s voice actor was none other than Tohru Furuya. Basically this chap has been the iconic voice of Amuro Ray in the classic Gundam series, so to have him play the villain in a new Gundam series was really rather delicious. Separately, when Ribbons and Amuro face off in the recent Saisei-hen they have some pretty cool dialogue together too (as it’s the same actor). In any case, the Reborns Gundam was always a potent unit and it’s no surprise that it has the 3000 point cost tag in Full Boost.

In a move that’s more than a little bit uplifting, Capcom it seems haven’t entirely abandoned the Lost Planet series. A new Capcom developed cel shaded and anime styled game called E.X. Troopers has been announced. Both 4Gamer and Famitsu have the scoop, along with a nice promo trailer (shown below). Functionally it looks a bit more arcadey in places, with the player dashing around a bit now, but it’s still very much a Lost Planet game. Especially as many recognisable Akrid are present not to mention the all important Vital Suits. Released on both PS3 and 3DS, the game will also be playable at this year’s Capcom Summer Jam. Interestingly, Shintaro Kojima (the game’s producer) also worked on the Monster Hunter series so expect even more of that type of functionality in this game. It also seems that May’n, of Macross Frontier fame, will involved musically too. In any case, our faith in Lost Planet has been reaffirmed and we can’t wait for this when it’s released later this year.

Gundam Battle Operation has received a new ground combat trailer. Showing off the human sized combat, the trailer doesn’t exactly help to assuage our fears. Whilst it’s the same team behind Gundam Senki 0081, we’re definitely getting flashbacks to the pretty awful Gundam Operation Troy. That said, since the beta a bunch of changes have gone in. From visible enemy life gauges to more easily visible hit markers and stun grenades for foot soldiers (the latter being in the trailer). The stun grenades look to be a pretty handy option but seem a bit overpowered in the trailer, as they cripple a mobile suit pretty effectively. The game is meant to be released sometime at the end of June but no specific date has been set as yet.

A nice new promo for Gundam Extreme Versus Full Boost has been uploaded by those nice people at Namco Bandai. At over 6 minutes it features a variety of new mobile suits as well as many familiar ones. The latter are also pretty interesting as it seems that many of them have had some new moves added, which is a nice touch. We also got pretty excited to see the MS-08TX(EXAM) Efreet Custom shown in a cool intro movie (something that each series got in the previous game) but our hopes were dashed against sharp pointy rocks when it wasn’t shown in game. Hopefully we’ll get to see it in action sometime soon. In any case, the full promo is shown below.

The recent alpha test for Mobile Suit Gundam Online has been given a full on report, coupled with a pretty interesting in-game video. In short, the game plays like a standard TPS, with WASD and mouse control (something you can pretty much deduce from the video below). Whilst it does look a bit dated what the game is doing technically is no mean feat; as it handles over a hundred online players per match. Our only real concern is the strange and rather excessive use of motion blur, hopefully that will get toned down at some point. Still no news on a release date for this but it’s expected sometime this year.