Review: Mech Rage (Nintendo Switch)

Mech Rage is top-down shooter action arcade game from publisher Drageus. Plenty of top-down arcade shooters to go around is this one at $9.99 worth your time and money?

It is set in a science fiction error where aliens are invading your ship. You play as John who is controlling a large mech inside of his ship to try and fend off invaders. His shipmate Alexa is helping him make his way through the ship to rescue the rest of the remaining crew.

Character dialogs are set in a tone that feels like office banter, using sarcasm rather than the serious tone the situation calls for. Other characters along the way are what you would almost expect from a game in this genre. Like the sarcastic yet tough guy named Diesel who’s been around – he even has the battle scars missing eye to prove it. The characters’ dialogue seem dull and boring with the overuse of sarcasm and jokes while also not being really funny – it just felt at odds with the serious tone of the game.

As players explore the different parts of the ship, they must destroy the enemy robots within. Enemies lack any sort of true variation, other than maybe color – orange is stronger and faster than yellow, while red is stronger and faster than orange. Rooms and stages look pretty much the same as well. There are a few minor differences amongst the obstacles and traps such as electrical shocking panels on the floor, but it still doesn’t add much variance to the game.

During a game, players have a weapon and a sub-weapon. The sub-weapon is more powerful than the main weapon and has a limit of three shots before needing to find more ammo. There’s also a timed shield that you can pick up throughout the game.

By collecting currency throughout the game players can upgrade their mech’s weapons and sub-weapons, but there isn’t much variance between them. An upgrade to give your sub-weapon more than three shots would have been much more helpful. There are hidden rooms that have hidden pickups or power-ups to expand your health or the length of time your shield lasts, but that’s about it.

Boss battles felt like more of a game of cat and mouse rather than an actual boss battle. After using the remaining shots of your sub-weapon on the boss, you would then waste time trying to get behind them to shoot with your regular weapon before they can shoot you. Defeating the boss seemed to drag on and on. I just lost interest and the flow of the game was impacted

Mech Rage isn’t a bad game, but it also isn’t a great game. It fails to bring anything we haven’t seen before to the genre. Despite not having too much variance from other top-down action shooters, Mech   Rage wasn’t entirely terrible but there wasn’t anything that made me want to scream “Yes, come play this!”. The $9.99 price tag isn’t too bad however you may want to wait for a sale to pick this one up.