A new Kickstarter campaign plans to bring the first two Muv Luv visual novels to Steam, with a full English localization. The initial goal was $250 thousand but the campaign has already blown clear past that. The series is an interesting one, as it deals with an alien invasion and the mecha used to take the aliens on. The mecha design is also pretty damn fantastic, so in that sense I am glad a series as popular as this is finally coming Westward.

As part of Sentinel’s ongoing Riobot range, we’ll be finally getting a toy of the Metal Gear Sahelanthropus from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Like prior toys in the range, this will also have a good chunk of diecast included. The extra good news, bar the LEDs and accessories, is that T-REX are also working on the design of this. Released in April next year, the Riobot Metal Gear Sahelanthropus will cost 41,040 yen. Considering it transforms and it is pretty massive with it, that’s a fair price all things considered. The mecha itself is pretty anachronistic within the series’ timeline but it makes for a fun boss fight at least (the latter being shown below, though obvious spoiler warning attached to that). You can pre-order this new toy here.

In welcome news, it seems we are to get AirMech Arena released on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sometime this spring courtesy of Ubisoft. This is an update to the already released game on Xbox 360, with the PC original still going strong. A fair few months back, the developers hooked us up with a VIP account on the PC version and we’ve been playing it solidly since. It’s a modern day take on Herzog Zwei and that’s nothing but a good thing. Even the freemium setup doesn’t really get in the way that much and that’s a rarity. The 360’s controls also worked great on a pad too, which was a surprise, so these new versions should be equally competent in that department too. In any case, it’s nice to see solid indie mecha game that harks back to classic gaming and does it with real flair and skill.

If you’re wondering what happened to Hawken, well Adhesive Games and their publisher Meteor sold the game in a bankruptcy sale to Reloaded Games. This is the same Reloaded Games that picked up APB after it tanked. So while there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Hawken, it definitely looks like a train in this case.

The real shame is that back in 2011, Hawken could have been something amazing. The final game was decent too but the freemium model utterly ruined it. If they had released the game as a singleplayer only XBLA or PSN game, like they planned to originally, then things would have likely turned out for the better. Shifting to a freemium setup with a customisable mecha game, where you paid for parts, was never going to end well.

So here’s to good mecha games ruined by capricious and short sighted publishers. Hopefully Hawken won’t die off quite yet but it could have been so much more.

Over at Joystiq they have an interview with Vince McMullin, a producer at Stompy Bot. If you remember, this was the studio that was making the new Heavy Gear Assault game for PC. Despite what they term as a crowdfunding “disaster”, though we think that’s a tad melodramatic in terms of analysis, it seems the game is still being made. So much so that we have some alpha build footage available (shown below).

Now this is using Unreal Engine 4 and I don’t want to be overly unkind, as this is an alpha build, but the game looks like total arse. Art fidelity aside, games like Project HON are clearly doing more functionally than this is. Even the already available Armored Core V and Verdict Day are more engaging than what this looks to be like.

We may be jumping the gun a bit but from what we’re seeing, it doesn’t look that great to play. Though we’ll reserve judgement until the game is finally released and hopefully by then they will have pushed the engine a bit more too.

So the initial announcement of Project HON sorta cherry picked footage for impact and didn’t give much of an overall sense of the game. Well, now we have around 20 minutes of mostly unedited game footage. In it, we see how much this game is like Armored Core V and Verdict Day. Not to mention how it has taken inspiration from classic anime like Gordian, where mecha get into larger mecha in order to power up. In addition to this new footage we’ve also been graced with a video of the game running on a mobile device. Now the game isn’t playable in this form, as it’s meant as a spectator setup only, but it’s technically very impressive to see. The new videos are shown below.

Dracue’s great little homage to 90s side scrolling mecha shoot-em-ups, Gunhound EX, is now on sale over at the Steam store. With a whopping 80% discount in effect, you’d be crazy not to pick this up. This is actually the PSP game that was released a while back but the game works fine on PC (as originally Gunhound was a PC game anyway). We will get around to reviewing these games though, we promise. In the meantime, buy this little beauty. It really is a great little game!

At the current G-Star 2014 show in Korea, it seems that NCSoft has announced a new mecha TPS game called Project HON. This looks to be quite similar in functionality to Armored Core V and Verdict Day and is also using Unreal Engine 4. Previously, NCSoft has made only fantasy styled MMOs with human scaled characters. They currently have no experience making any form of mecha TPS game but from what we have seen it looks they might be able to pull it off.

Update: Added new footage and modified above text.

We’ve known about Project Nimbus for a good while but have not really been covering it. Partly because most Kickstarters don’t amount to much but also we weren’t sure about it either. However, as of November 5th the game will be available via Early Access on Steam. This will include the first four story chapters among other things. Now we’re not a fan of Early Access on principle, as really games should only be released once they are finished, but we’re happy to see that these guys have managed to get this far. In any case, the game looks to be very much inspired by the likes of Armored Core For Answer and is also aerial based. If you are at all curious then the early access trailer is shown below.

So it looks like we’ll be getting a few Virtual On Force VR’s and a Virtual On themed area added to the recently released Phantasy Star Online 2. It’s worth clarifying that these are just costumes for player characters and aren’t actually full blown VRs in the traditional sense. The Virtual On lobby will be opened at the end of July until the middle of August. A promo video of the new costumes are shown below, they kick in around the 2:31 mark.