Developer: Drageus Games S.A.
Publisher: Ultimate Games S.A.
Platform: PC, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Mech Rage – Review
Get ready for an all-new top-down shooter for the Nintendo Switch as Mech Rage has come to the Nintendo universe. In a distant galaxy, your ship is traveling through space when it is suddenly attacked by aliens! You are the only one who can rescue your ship and your crew so it’s your task to protect everything you love. Are you up for the task to eradicate all those pesky alien creatures on your ship?
Story
In Mech Rage, you’ll take control of John, a greenhorn captain of the intergalactic spaceship Excalibur. This spaceship is being attacked by aliens and you must defend your ship and crew from harm. The only weapon in your possession is a Combat Mech. While traversing through the different parts of your ship, you will communicate with your crew members. They will tell you about enemies you’ll encounter or if your way is blocked, they’ll explain what to do next. A bad thing is that the game’s dialogues are riddled with spelling mistakes as well as a lack of knowledge of basic grammar. It’s clear that a spelling test wasn’t done to improve the language in-game. The story of Mech rage is split up between levels that all are in a specific part of the spaceship. When entering a room, your crew members will communicate with you. Sometimes, they’ll direct you by telling you which way you need to go but it occurs that you’ll need to find your own way.
Graphics
For a top-down shooter, the graphics in Mech Rage are not the best, but not bad. In the workshop, you’ll get a more detailed look at your combat mech in which you’ll play each level. From the top-down point of view, it looks pretty simple but it looks quite nice in the workshop screen. Floor tiles in levels can have electrical surges passing through them and when they do, it’s easy to spot. Each level consists out of several rooms you’ll need to pass through that all have a different interior. You can go in different directions to complete the objectives required to make it through each level.
Sound
There’s not a lot to say about the music and sounds in Mech Rage. In the menus, you’ll hear a very repetitive track. While playing through levels, this isn’t any different. These tracks are filled with a lot of drums and some electrical sounds. You’ll notice that these tunes won’t take much longer than a minute and they are on a repeat mode through the whole game. This makes the music very annoying to listen at after a while, motivating you to either turn of the sound, or simply put on some music yourself.
Gameplay
Mech Rage is a top-down shooter. In this game, you control a combat mech and your job is to eradicate all alien forces on your spaceship after a sudden alien attack.
There are only a few buttons needed to play this game and this make the controls very easy to handle. You walk around by using the left control stick and with the right one, you’ll set the angle of your weapons. With the ZL and ZR buttons, you can use your weapons and by pressing the left bumper, you can dash. Your combat mech is equipped with two weapons for use in battle, your primary gun, which has unlimited ammo and can be used at will, and your seconday weapon which uses bullets.
In each room, there can be a lot of barrels and crates that can be broken when shot. These can provide boxes of money, health, ammo and shield. The exposed content will remain in that room when you don’t pick them up, so you can return there to collect them if you’re on low health or out of ammo. Shield will provide you a temporary shield that will slowly drain with time.
On your journey across the different levels on your spaceship, you will eventually find upgrades for your combat mech. These upgrades can permanently increase your maximum ammo capacity, the duration of your shield before it expires, your dash skill, the combat mech’s armor and its speed.
After clearing levels, you can spend the amount of money you earned to purchase new weapons for your powered suit. Your primary weapon is a plasma gun and there are nine variants. There are three different damage outputs for this weapon and there are three variants in rate of fire. The combination of these two variables create the nine different plasma guns, which go from MK. I to IX. Watch out before you upgrade to a new weapon because if you pick the cheapest version with a higher damage output, you’ll end up with a low rate of fire.
There are nine different weapons available as a secondary weapon, these vary from a simple shotgun to an ion cannon that will obliterate everything nearby with a nuclear blast. All of these weapons will take some time getting used to, as they all handle differently. For example, a grenade launcher will fly over enemies which stand too close. If you don’t time and aim right, you can easily miss your target and waste your ammo by doing so.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to replay levels you’ve already cleared to obtain more money. This forces you to continue playing higher levels with weaker weapons if you want to save for a better variant of your primary weapon. If you purchased a secondary weapon for a lot of money and it doesn’t suit your playstyle, you’ll have to do with it in the upcoming levels before you can purchase something new. This can lead to you getting stuck in a certain level and there’s no way to complete it and you’ll need to start over by starting a new campaign.
The difficulty of the game is surprisingly high, even on the normal difficulty. Some enemies shoot a ton of bullets at you and it’s almost impossible to dodge them all. This will drain your mech’s health a lot and you can die easily in matter of seconds. This can lead to you having to replay a specific room a bunch of times before you’ll make it through.
Conclusion
Mech Rage can be a fun game to play but it also has its downsides. The gameplay is good, but it sometimes can be difficult to make it through specific rooms. Not being able to replay levels to acquire some extra cash can be annoying, if you get stuck at a level and there’s no way to change your equipment to get through. There’s a lot of variation in the secondary weapons but your primary weapon will always be the same because you can only get upgraded versions of the same weapon. The bad grammar and spelling mistakes are easily ignored. All of that being said, the game has its flaws, but it can be fun to play.
Mech Rage - Review,
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