Yet another live stream has been and gone for Armored Core V. This one was thankfully more restrained in terms of the presenters, basically because Toshifumi Nabeshima clearly hasn’t got the time for that kind of mindless crap. Unfortunately it featured less actual gameplay footage this time around, instead covering other elements such as the story and mission breakdown. However, a nice but short snippet of the game’s opening CG movie was shown. Primarily displaying the beefiness of tanks and that our mechanically inclined future has gone to hell in a hand basket, a very brown hand basket.

Another live stream event for Armored Core V will be happening on the 2nd June. Around an hour long it will also feature the opening CG cinematic for the game. Whilst we’ve already seen snippets of the CG movie from the (re)announcement trailer, it will be cool to see more of it finally. Especially as From Software have a pretty stellar track record when it comes to this kind of thing, with the opening cinematic for Armored Core Last Raven being one of our favourites.

From the incomparable gevurah22, creator of many other LittleBigPlanet mecha creations, has outdone himself yet again with a LittleBigPlanet 2 stage entitled The Gundam Wing Project: Survival Training. The video below shows the Wing Gundam unbelievably well-animated for something put together in a game’s somewhat simplistic editor, and the author is continuing to add content to the stage, including a boss fight against the Wing Gundam’s nemesis, the Tallgeese. The Tallgeese might have a silly name and a silly red hat, but those backpack verniers will make any Gundam come down with a case of thruster envy.

Over at Amazon.co.jp the boxart (and prices!) of both console versions, PS3 and 360, for Armored Core V have finally been displayed. Like the Japanese 360 boxart for Armored Core 4, the latest game isn’t afraid to show how brown our dystopian future will be. That said, we still like it a lot and it’s nicely stylised (despite the colour palette). The subdued approach to showing the mecha in silhouette is also a nice touch and refreshingly subtle. Hopefully, the Western release won’t end up like this eyesore did though.

Separately, the second extended live stream happened and like the first has some pretty excitable presenters. Oh well. Craziness aside, the game is looking even more bloody amazing and the tank legs look awesomely beefy.

Good news: it seems that English speakers are getting an actual Gundam game localized overseas, even if it’s decidedly the least ‘mecha’ of the Gundam games, Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3. The US site gives the release date as June 28th 2011, and Europe gets it a few days later, on July 1st 2011.

Needless to say, fans of pressing the X and Y buttons for hours on end will be chomping at the bit to play this, but despite the repetitive gameplay of the first two games I also have to admit that I have 200 hours of play time split between them. The third installment doesn’t seem to change the formula so it’s hard to recommend it, but the Dynasty Warriors series is as long-lived as it is for a reason; sometimes you don’t need the depth of Armored Core, but just want to hammer away at 1,000 Zakus for fifteen minutes, or play something split-screen with a friend without them needing a half-hour tutorial. And, unfortunately, mecha fans don’t exactly have much to pick from in terms of Gundam games in English, and being able to take part in the epic finale to Zeta Gundam is often worth suffering through occasionally mindless gameplay.

The English trailer shows off the new cel-shaded graphics, and seeing the Turn A Gundam again–now accompanied by the absolutely godlike Kapools–does my metallic robot heart some good.

The latest live stream footage for Armored Core V, from the first of two extended sessions, is now archived (we’ve linked it below). For those that found the first session a bit hysterical, then you’ll be happy to hear that this session is much more grounded. Mostly because it is handled by the people at From Software themselves excluding the somewhat unnecessary “tarento” that were present in the first session, with Toshifumi Nabeshima (effectively the father of Armored Core) in the driving seat for most of the time. With each passing day, the more we learn and see of Armored Core V in action the more we feel compelled to build a time machine and zip forward to the game’s October release.

It’s been announced in the latest Famitsu that another OG game in the Super Robot Wars series is on the way, entitled Dai-2-Ji Super Robot Taisen OG. Not only will it have traditional 2D animations (yay!) it will also be on the PlayStation 3 (super yay!). Apparently, the animations will specifically make use of the HD resolution the console can offer. Considering the last HD SRW game was XO on the 360 (and even that was a port of SRW GC) the fact we now have a proper 2D SRW coming to a modern console is utterly fantastic news. No word on a specific release date as yet but it is expected to ship sometime this year.

Update: Famitsu has updated their site with a whole piece on the game. The screenshots look amazing.

Over at 4Gamer they have a bunch of new screenshots for Armored Core V, as well as a thorough breakdown of all the information featured in Famitsu last week. The interesting points are that back weapons are partially gone now and replaced by hangar units, which are stored across the shoulders but used by both arms. In addition the player now has to equip a recon unit to scan the area (no doubt feeding into the new scan mode we saw). In addition, ammo types are broken down down into kinetic, chemical and thermal now (rather than just solid and energy, as in the past). Finally, the update covers the new boost types. With the wall jumping Boost Drive being our favourite at the moment. Famitsu will also be having new live stream events on the 19th and 26th May. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

Update: 4Gamer also has a new piece on some additional parts, one of which being a rather uber looking sniper rifle.

The much anticipated live demo for Armored Core V has been and gone. Thankfully From Software archived the 2 hours plus of footage (shown below). The highlights, for us anyway, were the all new scan and combat modes for the HUD (with scan mode shown above) as well as the fact that the combat looked utterly bloody amazing. For those concerned that ACV would be slower than the last two games, don’t worry. Whilst it looks more manageable now, you’ll be boosting all over the place in what can only be described as ecstatic abandon. In short, October cannot come soon enough for us.

Out of the ashes from the team that brought you the Warhawk reboot, comes an all new game in the same vein. Entitled Starhawk, the game is fundamentally similar to Warhawk but with two major changes; an RTS element and a bipedal mecha mode for the jets. Considering that the hover mode in Warhawk was a semi-mecha themed mode anyway, this sounds like a good fit. Unfortunately, the mecha are entirely groundbased and look a tad clunky (no boosting basically). We’re obviously hoping it won’t turn out like the dreadful Bayformer cash ins but we wish the team luck.