Ar-Mech-Geddon?
HIGH I built a mech with a lion’s head and a tail! Lots of stuff to blow up.
LOW Excessive grinding. Repetitive mission structure.
WTF Why is the trailer so fascinated with phallic drills? Why did I build a mech with one?
Clicking the afterburners while making sure no enemy mechs were on my six, I raced through the ruined city searching for more targets. I had taken some heavy damage from a barrage of incoming missiles, but my mech was no pushover, and had plenty of firepower to boot. I locked in on another foe as the sunlight glinted of my mech’s lion head, tank body, and adorable… horsey feet.
Custom Mech Wars revels in being both serious and absurd at the same time. Technically, it’s a third-person shooter featuring millions of rounds of ammo and missiles galore slamming into more enemy mechs than the mind can comfortably comprehend, but it also allows players to build their own creations out of things like subway trains, dragon tails, and the aforementioned horse feet.
It tries to tell a harrowing (in theory) story of AI run amok and threatening the very existence of humankind, but also combines it with goofy dialogue and meet-cutes between ancillary characters spouting endless exposition. It’s EDF meets MechAssault and should be a no-brainer for me as it pushes all of my “right kind of stupid” buttons, but I can’t get past the feeling that it’s lacking a certain something.
In the future after some sort of catastrophe, the player is given an underpowered prototype mech and sent off to defeat swarms of enemies, the idea being that they’ll acquire broken parts from defeated opponents and eventually build more powerful units for use.
Anyone who’s ever played a third-person shooter will be right at home with the controls, in addition to boosters for dashing and aerial maneuvers. Occasionally, the pilot may exit the vehicle to call for a new mech due to damage, or to activate dormant turrets and decoys scattered across the maps to help even the odds.
In each level, players will face everything from insignificant mini-mechs to screen-filling behemoths with different weapons, attack patterns, movement speeds, and weaknesses to exploit. There are 40 (!!!) campaign missions and five difficulty levels, meaning there’s plenty of replayability and the challenge can be quite brutal on harder settings.
While the combat is solid, the real claim to fame here is, naturally, the “Omega Customization” which claims to allow players to build just about anything. The creation suite is comprehensive and easy to use, and I was able to build vehicles with wildly different arsenals and defensive capabilities in a matter of minutes. Each build can also be tested before jumping into the campaign. Defeating harder difficulty missions rewarded me with more parts of increasing rarity, encouraging replay and further building. There’s even a cooperative campaign where players can work together online to tackle more challenging missions, earning even more rare parts to play with.
Why then, do I consider this title average at best? There are several reasons.
First, Omega Customization promises the ability to create anything. In reality, the most useful and special mech parts are gated behind the hardest difficulty settings. Early builds limit players to the smallest mech chassis and weakest weapons, meaning it’s simply not possible to win at the higher difficulties, and a defeat means no loot. Even after beating the campaign on a lower setting, I still didn’t have the parts to build anything other than small and medium-sized robots.
Compounding this, the missions simply aren’t varied enough to make up for all the grinding required to unlock better parts. The vast majority consist of nothing more complex than scouring the map and wiping out all enemy mechs. A select few missions give the player something else to do like defending a specific structure, but otherwise, it’s like playing the same mission 40 times for one completion, and then factor in replays…
The moment-to-moment combat isn’t all that hot, either. Weather conditions some graphical changes, but don’t affect the gameplay in any meaningful way. I can always see all enemies on my radar, so limited visibility doesn’t change my approach. Enemies spawn out of thin air, so trying to use the environment to my advantage didn’t make a difference. Boss fights aren’t satisfying — they’re just big damage sponges. The story isn’t engaging, and it’s almost impossible to read or listen to the profuse dialogue that plays during each mission while keeping an eye on everything else during battle.
I tried the online co-op, but each time there was literally only one person in the entire world playing at the same time I was. I was able to play missions with them, but they had clearly done more grinding for parts than I had, as their large-chassis beasts annihilated everything in sight while I basically hung back and watched.
At the current price, there simply isn’t enough bang for the buck to recommend Custom Mech Wars to anyone but the most ardent giant robot lovers. It’s entertaining for a little while, but getting more out of it demands far more of one’s time than is justified.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by D3PUBLISHER. It is currently available on PC and PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 1 hour of play was spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence. This is a game about destroying hundreds of AI-piloted mechs. Naturally, there is frequent use of various weapons such as cannons, lasers, and missiles against non-human foes. Buildings can be destroyed, but the story implies there are no occupants in any of them. There is implied (offscreen) violence against humans as the player can hear the death screams of allies. The player can exit the mech and be physically attacked and/or killed, but there is no blood or outward signs of violence other than the player’s pilot falling over. There is mild to severe profanity used infrequently including s*** and b******. It is somewhat easy to miss this profanity as the game’s voice-overs are in Japanese, and the translated text appears in a window of the pilot’s HUD while the action is taking place. It’s pretty safe for kids to watch/play this one other than the language.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All spoken dialogue is subtitled, although some subtitle colors and sizes are difficult to read. All sound effects have an accompanying visual cue. It’s possible to be attacked from behind by enemy mechs, but that happened to me regardless of sound — it’s easy to tell where incoming fire is coming from.
Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. All buttons are remappable, but mech movement is locked to the control sticks.
He juggles this passion for gaming with his most important job, being a husband and dad.Fortunately, his boys are growing up as gamers (with decidedly more skill, much to his annoyance) and he has a very understanding spouse.
He hangs out on Twitter sometimes as @JPSJeffOrt, Facebook FAR less frequently, and while he misses performing all the interviews from his former online life, he’s much more relaxed now!
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