The mechs drawn by Yoji Shinkawa have been realized with a richness of details never before seen in other titles. The job done on 3D models, the great quality of textures and the number of polygons used for every mech bring Zone Of The Enders on a higher step in comparison to the other titles released for Ps2 till now.
Jehuty is a more than 20 meters tall robot; great part of its body is composed by metallic components that shade off towards the blue color, while the articulations are all in red. Big care is reserved however to every mech in the game. Neith has a beautiful female human shape that remembers Mazinger anime; the Raptors have a tubular structure, extraordinarily fanciful, while the gigantic Tempest mechs, that have the assignment to destroy whole cities, resemble to enormous octopuses, with animated tentacles. But what's most surprising is that these polygonal models are extraordinarily managed in real time by the graphic engine developed by KCEJ, with a speed that surprises also the player who is accustomed to games based on fast-paced action, like FPS and fighting games.
The environments in which you will fight are simply amazing. Zone Of The Enders will allow you to fight in the middle of enormous spatial cities: you will see animated cities that will tremble under your hits. We need to remember the particular structure of the inhabited zone of the colony of Antilia, where the game takes place. Antilia is a sort of gigantic spatial base with a lengthened shape. At two extremes there are two ring structures of different dimensions. The zone inside one of these rings contains the city, covered by a transparent shield. So, during your fights you can see as a background the buildings and the streets bending upward, just as in a dreadful loop. If you have ever seen 2001: Space Odyssey and you remember the scene in which the protagonist runs through the corridors of the space station, you can easily understand what I am trying to explain.
Both the sceneries and the mechs are more impressive thanks to the use of a huge variety of special effects. Every mech, when activated, is crossed by blue or red flows; every hit emanates bright rays of different type and the reactors that allow your mech to fly create beams of blue light according to your speed. In the sceneries, besides the absolutely realistic flames that you will see coming from the buildings hit during the battles, you will see the smoke rising slowly and cars passing along the roads of the city. And these are only some of the wonders that Zone Of The Enders can offer. If you have ever played with Metal Gear Solid, you can imagine what surprises Team Kojima created for this new game.
Zone Of The Enders, for its excellent graphic engine able to generate in real time enormous cities, with no doubt has the best graphics seen so far in a videogame for Ps2. Onimusha is a good looking game, but ZoE is really a step toward the true meaning of the over-used expression “next generation”.
