4:56pm Friday 26th June 2009
Mecho Wars is a turn-based strategy game set in a surreal land of conflict and strange creatures.
Taking place in the Divination Deserts, the game pitches you into the war between the opposing Winged Crusade and Landians forces.
Mecho Wars is a prequel to the Eternity's Child PC game. If like me you’re unfamiliar with this title don’t be put off. You’ll soon be immersed in the action without needing to worry about what the future holds for the two factions or the back story of why they are engaged in armed struggle in the first place.
The first thing that stands out about Mecho Wars is the incredibly high quality and imaginative art style.
From game designer Luc Bernard’s new studio Oyaji Games, Mecho Wars offers a vivid, technicolour presentation. Kaleidoscopic or even psychedelic might also describe the dreamlike environments and bizarre, highly stylised graphics in the game. This game is eccentric and proud, weird but in a good way, a visual treat.
The game also scores highly in the music department with an original and very atmospheric score providing perfect accompaniment to the eye candy.
That I’ve waxed lyrical about the look of the game ahead of writing about how it plays might suggest Mecho Wars is a case of style over substance, something pretty to look at that doesn’t have much under the bonnet.
This isn’t the case though as Mecho Wars is an absorbing, intelligent game. Gameplay is very strategic and tactical, but also fun.
The main single player mode provides 13 missions of increasing complexity. This focuses on the rise of the Winged Crusade, who you control. These missions can be repeated once you’ve completed them. There is also an additional set of six individual challenge maps.
If you’ve played turn-based strategy games such as Advance Wars before then the mechanics of Mecho Wars will be familiar straight away. Newcomers to the genre may feel slightly lost as precious little introduction is provided.
As with any battle, success depends on controlling and eventually conquering your enemy. It’s a careful balance between attack and defence, destroying your enemy’s forces while protecting your own units, cities, factories and main base.
When it’s your turn you can move units around the map, launch attacks on enemy units, capture buildings or cities and build new units. The number of units you can have in your force at any one time depends on how many factories you have. At the beginning of each turn you are given cash to spend on new units, the amount of money dependant on how many cities you control.
When you’ve carried out all the actions open to you, your turn ends. Your AI opponent (or human in pass-n-play mode) then gets a turn.
When you attack or are attacked the game switches to a split screen view where the opposing units take aim at each other and you then the damage which has been done. A unit always starts with a maximum strength of 10, which decreases with hit it takes. When it’s down to zero the unit is out of the game.
Watching the animated battles does get repetitive and can be switched off, but for me this is where the game is at its best visually so I leave the battles on.
Once both forces have had a turn time moves on in-game by an hour and then it’s your turn again. Time uniquely plays an important role in Mecho Wars. There are a lot of expanses of water in the game, and these freeze over at night. This creates an interesting extra dimension when moving your troops around but if any units are left on the water when it thaws then you lose them.
There are nine units available in the game, offering a range of infantry, artillery and air personnel. But these are no ordinary fighters. Some delightful creativity has gone into the design of the units – for example, the Elpho which basically consists of, well, elephant soldiers.
Make no mistake, there is a lot to like about Mecho Wars. But there are also some areas to be improved upon which stop it being the complete package.
For instance, online multiplayer, a standard expectation in strategy games these days, is teased within Mecho Wars but not yet delivered.
Very little information about units and what they do is given in the game. It would be nice to know what enemy units are capable of before attacking them and likewise the effectiveness of your own units so you can be better informed when deciding which types to send into battle. There is a bit too much trial and error – when I send a unit to fight I often have little idea of how much damage it’s going to cause or whether the enemy unit will counter-attack.
Instructions are hinted at rather than explicitly provided which makes it difficult to understand parts of the game.
Variable AI difficulty levels would increase the replay value of the game as would more missions and challenges – 13 missions and six challenge maps feels slightly limited, although as I’ve said the quality of the gameplay is very high.
These issues could be (and in some cases are being already) addressed in future updates,, so there is scope for Mecho Wars to reach its very high potential.
What’s here now is a fantastic work in progress which is about three-quarters there (hence the score below), but Mecho Wars has a lot of promise and it will be interesting to see just how far this game takes the strategy genre on this platform.
Verdict: 7.5 out of 10 (Initial score which may increase after updates)
The good:
- Absorbing, strategic turn-based battles
- Beautiful, distinctive, quirky art style
- Novel use of day/night cycle and environment during game
The bad:
- No online multiplayer
- Not enough instruction given before the game or enough information provided during the game
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