Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Most underrated, groundbreaking games of the 90s
Table of Contents
- Release date: October 24, 1998
- Developer: Monolith Productions
- Genre: FPP
In this game, real FPS specialists, i.e. Monolith studio, mixed pure shooter with anime setting. And it turned out to be a surprisingly good and sweet cocktail. Despite a few flaws, Shogo18×16 svg was engaging with the action and was incredibly spectacular, and the melodramas in the background didn't hurt. Shogo divided the game into traditional stages with a gun in your hand and the control of mechs of various classes. The mechanics didn't change much, but thanks to the right perspective, walking around the city streets, and increasingly greater firepower and armor, the impression of total destruction was really otherworldly. It was further amplified by great explosion effects and much more durable armor of the mechs.
The game received great scores, but it did very poorly on the market – the sales results were "disappointing" for the publisher. And so, Shogo didn't become a commercial success. Due to poor sales, work on two story additions was abandoned: Shugotenshi and Legacy of the Fallen, which were supposed to significantly expand the threads and introduce new locations, weapons and armors.
There were many reasons for the failure. One of them was definitely the time of the premiere, coinciding with the debut of such a hit as Half-Life or SiN. Apparently, the creators themselves realized that they were too inexperienced and not "big" enough to prepare a position great in every aspect, so they focused only on making shooting a lot of fun. One of the analysts later emphasized that Monolith's status as a small publisher was also to blame, since that developers could not afford to give proper exposition to the game on the shelves in the stores, which larger companies eagerly paid for back then. Although players quickly forgot about Shogo, this production is remembered very fondly today.
Asian fables instead of Kate Archer
And you know that Shogo was supposed to get its spiritual successor, a military action game in anime settings? Only that in order to please the publisher and people with marketing, the project was constantly evolving until it evolved from an anime shooter into one of the best FPS games of all times, where the setting was ultimately changed to that of spy movies from the 1960s, called No One Lives Forever. And the rest of the ideas from the would-be Shogo sequel were used in FEAR, another big hit from the studio.
