Gundam – it's a phenomenon! People love these giant mechanical robots zipping around in space, waging intergalactic war, and fighting with the biggest lightsabers this side of the Star Wars universe. The Gundam robots are getting ready to make their way to the next generation PS3 with all the robot action you could want.

First off, the graphics are nice, but that is really a given considering this is the PS3 we are talking about, and you would hope chat about a game on that system wouldn't start off with a comment about horrendous graphics. The Gundam models are the best looking thing in the whole game, as they are perfectly executed and look just like I remember them from the various series. The environments aren't as detailed as they are giant, sprawling open terrain with hill rises, and it looks as if not much at all was put into the ambience, but this is still an early preview build that is certain to change before the final release date that is still months away.

Unlike Mobile Ops: The One Year War, Gundam Mobile Suit controls more like a sim instead of an arcade endeavor. Your Gundam controls as if you are walking a box around the place. I would expect a giant walking machine like this to have weight and not make the smoothest turns, but I could barely get these giant mechs to go anywhere I wanted. It was literally a slow turn, followed by a slow turn, followed by the game not doing what I asked, followed by more slow turning.

Since the controls were so hard to understand, the combat was equally difficult. There was a lock on feature to have your Gundam focus its attention on the enemy, but I could never get the thing to turn so that it was actually facing in that direction. In the tradition of the Gundam series, your Gundam features both a gun weapon and the aforementioned lightsaber. Now, each weapon is attached to a certain button press, so you have to push one to use the gun and the other for your sword. Once my gun was drawn it was easy to shoot it, but I could never get the sword to actually swing. Of course, I could never face an enemy or get close enough to use it, so I don't guess it matters one way or another whether I managed to swing it or not.

With the graphical power of the PS3 I had hope that the game would control as well as it looked, but that was sadly not the case. I guess the graphics were worked on first for this preview so people could say, "That PS3 sure has some nice graphics." Hopefully the controls will be tweaked, which I'm sure it will, because there are months to go before its release and the little sticker showed the game still had a while to go in its development process.