I'm not a huge anime follower, but there are a few shows I've managed to follow from time to time. Dragonball Z was my main anime fix, but I've watched some Naruto too. I also followed one Gundam series pretty heavily at one time, and so I have a fondness for the giant mechs. Well, any Gundam fan knows that they haven't made for the greatest games, and the current crop is showing some difficulties too.

It seems I have to preface all these E3 previews with a warning saying this is nowhere near the final product, so expect some problems to be fixed and to save any final opinions for finished products, but these are just some initial thoughts on what I got to play.

Unlike the PS3 Gundam game, Mobile Ops: The One Year War seems more arcade friendly and fast, which to this gamer means more interesting and fun. Once I figured out the gist of the game, such as moving to the NAV markers to advance the game, it was easy to maneuver and engage in combat.

Once I set foot in my Gundam, I was easily turning towards the direction of the NAV and heading off in that direction, which I generally moved to by leapfrogging since it was the coolest and quickest way to move in my opinion. At the NAV marker fights usually broke out such as a surprise attack by three enemy mobile suits.

Combat here consisted of just shooting, because either the lightsaber-esque sword wasn't available or I couldn't figure out how to equip it, but either way it was okay since shooting got the job done just fine. Typically these fights were prefaced with an in-game cutscene, so I always knew who to fight. It was easy to backup while shooting, jump around, and strafe left and right to avoid the enemy gunfire. There was also a way to make the game go into a first person shooter like perspective that had you looking over your arm that was supporting your gun.

Though the mobile suits looked nice, the tiny troop members were too small I felt, but maybe that was simply to give the game a sense of scale, because these people really shouldn't be close to the size of the Gundams, but it was sad that I couldn't see the troops more clearly.

The biggest problem with this Mobile Ops: The One Year War preview build at E3 was that the environments were really, really open and were sparse in regards to life. Basically the environment I played in was a large open prairie field with some hills and nothing but a tree scattered here and there. The preview also contained a lot of fog over the horizon, which I wish wouldn't have been there, but hopefully all this will be corrected and fixed by the time the final game comes to store shelves.