War Tech Fighters – Review

Mech games have always been popular, and they come in a variety of genres or even different styles. We have games such as the Steel Battalion series, where we go back in the past, and see our past wars being fought with giant robots, or we have the Armored Core series, that offers us a plethora of different Mech units, which can be customized beyond belief, and of course there are the Gundam games, which put Mech units on the map for many people. This time we take a look at War Tech Fighters, a project by Drakkar Dev, which has now reached Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Switch after its debut on PC back in July 2018.

Story

The game revolves around two rebel factions ‘sticking it to the man’, by combining their forces, and their extremely powerful robot suits in order to overthrow the Zatros empire. That’s pretty much all there is to the game, and while there are cutscenes and dialogues, the story remains background material and doesn’t suck you in at all. It doesn’t help that the game just throws you into the gameplay without a proper introduction of what the hell is actually going on.

Graphics

When looking at War Tech Fighters, with the capabilities of our current generation of consoles in mind, we must say that the entire package is somewhat underwhelming. The robots themselves are decently designed, and the game offers a lot of customization options, allowing you to tune your fighter, but the overall quality is lacking. The textures feel dated, the overall quality seems to be on par with the games from last generation and many maps feel empty. We know that most battles find place in the vast emptiness of space, but the space ships all look like they have been copy pasted several times, the enemies feel bland and boring and there’s just not a whole lot to look at. While gameplay often reigns supreme in games such as this, the eye does want something more than a seemingly upscaled PlayStation 3 game on your PlayStation 4.

Sound

The sound design of War Tech Fighters is actually quite good. The music gets you in the mood and the sound effects do the trick, but there are also some minor setbacks that make the quality dip from superb, to just good. The voice acting during the cutscenes is decent and sucks you in, but the voice acting used for your suit’s AI is crappy beyond belief. It sounds like one of those Japanese girls trying to speak English without any prior knowledge of the language. As stated above, the sound effects are decent, but the sound of your thrusters when in boost mode simply sounds horrible, as if the sound was taken from a generic database and implemented five minutes before the game was released because someone forgot to add it prior.

Gameplay

War Tech Fighters is a third-person action game, in which you commandeer a Mech suit and blast all your enemies to smithereens. The offset of the game is quite simple, as you’ll go from one mission to another, blasting your enemies to bits, collecting data, protecting allies, and most importantly grind money for the many upgrades the game has to offer. Overall the basics are decent, the game just lacks a certain punch to elevate it to the next level.

The combat in the game is pretty straightforward. You can fly in all directions, you have a light attack (machine guns), a heavy attack (cannons) and a missile attack. The latter can be focused on a single target or when switched in a different attack mode, on multiple targets. You can also trigger melee combat, but this feels a bit like an annoying mini-game in which you’ll have to bash the buttons better than your enemy. Overall, things feels adequate but very basic. Nonetheless, it’s quite satisfying to be able to easily dispose of your enemies, especially with the decent lock-on system in place.

When playing for a while you’ll notice that the game has loads of customization options, allowing you to turn your mech into the ultimate fighting machine. There are many parts that you can buy by simply saving up enough money but others will require you to collect tokens in missions, in order to unlock them. You’ll also see many subtle winks to other franchises when looking at the parts for your robot, such as the War Machine set, which is a clear homage to the Iron Man franchise. Others will also ring a bell, and there are also characters that look like famous actors, which we’re not sure if it was intentional or not.

Conclusion

War Tech Fighters is one of those games that offers a lot of mindless fun, especially when grinding for a lot of fancy upgrades, but the game never manages to truly stand out from the competition. The basics are there, the fun is present, but it just lacks proper finishing touches, especially when looking at the very dated graphics. Nonetheless, if you like third-person action games, in which you blast hordes of enemy combatants to pieces, with the occasional annoying stealth mission thrown in-between, this one can still offer several hours of fun content.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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