Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Never Ending Tomorrow for PlayStation 2 Reviews & Ratings by IGN

If only one thing can be said about the various Gundam flavored titles that have snuck into my PlayStation 2's wary disc tray, it's that every one has been unmistakably Gundam. Such is also the case here, but casual players unfamiliar with the intricate Gundam backstory (specifically that of the Cosmic Era) will be at a complete loss to describe what the hell is going on. Still, Never Ending Tomorrow does feature an excessive amount of animated cutscenes interjected between playable segments and even those come highlighted by the occasional CGI bits. So you'll never forget that it's Gundam. But if you've already played Battle Assault 3 you might be disappointed to find that this one features the same Gundam storyline, albeit with more explanation.

Now let's put the inherent Gundam-ness aside and assume you're purchasing a videogame to actually play it. Let's assume you value your time and would like to invest in a worthwhile experience. Let's assume you're looking for more than an arbitrary allocation of all things Gundam... So what then?

In its simplest form, Never Ending Tomorrow can be thought of as a totally botched attempt to copy some small bit of Second Runner's glory. It's a clunky, plodding, ridiculously awkward title that focuses on the lock-on driven attacks and boosts of Japanese themed mecha combat titles. Never Ending Tomorrow also manages to boast none of the subtle grace, speed, responsiveness, or technical quality that made Z.O.E. and a few other like games so memorable.

If you play the story from either Kira or Athrun's perspective, you'll be treated to a grand total of about 30 missions. Each begins with a nonsensical snippet of Gundam fiction unceremoniously ripped out of context and each mission ends with a similarly confusing scene. The actual gameplay isn't nearly so hard to decipher, though. You just lock onto something, slowly fly or walk toward it, then start shooting and beating. That is all.

At some points objectives other than "kill those dudes" will appear, but "kill those dudes before they can kill that thing" is hardly a sweet change of pace. If anything, the extra objective-based play mechanics only make the underlying game more tedious, because instead of mindlessly beating enemies to death while contending with an atrocious camera system as they swarm around you, it's necessary to futilely boost to the very edges of the operational area trying to blow them all up from afar as they vainly attempt to flee. This isn't all that fun. It's especially awful if you happened to choose a sword striking variant with less than accurate space-ninja stars as your primary ranged attack.

There's also the totally superfluous inclusion of support characters with different boost abilities and personalities that you won't hear unless you fiddle around with the sound levels. And there're even plenty of different items and upgrades that you won't buy since the game is so painfully straightforward, but at least the inclusion of such things shows that Never Ending Tomorrow is still Gundam enough to shamelessly brandish the name and gear.

Of course, the game exhibits the same kind of audio and visual production quality we can now safely associate with every single Gundam game that will ever be made on this current generation of consoles. That is, some of the environments are passable and the Mobile Suits themselves are nicely detailed, but animations are sorely lacking, ground-based battles are hideous, and explosive particle effects are plain. The same can be said about the sound, music and voice work. There are things that sound like Gundam and, more often than not, they have come from some version of previously aired Gundam. If you're looking for more, you're going to be looking a long time.

Finally, Never Ending Tomorrow features a weakly presented, barely enjoyable two-player split-screen mode that basically worsens the already pointless combat and sloppy camera and control systems by multiplying the whole thing by a factor of two.

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