Custom Mech Wars is the latest game from D3PUBLISHER, the company that puts out the incredible cult series Earth Defense Force. And somehow, D3PUBLISHER has made a better version of its own game, and I couldn’t be happier.
If you’ve not checked in with the EDF series in a while, then you should 100% check out EDF 5, which finally delivers on the sheer volume of creatures that games want you to fight but without the technical hiccoughs of the earlier entries.
While Custom Mech Wars doesn’t have you fighting giant ants, spiders, or frogs, which apparently look just like humans, it does have an awful lot of mechs. Each mech you fight is something you can build as long as you collect the parts, which means that if you see a train that has a gun on top of it and a robot head at the front, then you, too, can live that dream.
The core gameplay is that you can boost, fly, and shoot at things. Things get slightly more complex than that, but that’s basically what you’ll be doing. You fight against huge waves of enemies in each level, and while some of those are going to present a challenge, especially later on in the game or on the harder difficulty modes, there’s a lot of fodder here.
Related: Earth Defense Force 6 Looks Perfectly Ridiculous in First Trailer, Gameplay Revealed
It’s Just Aggressive LEGO
That’s because combat is basically just an excuse for you to show off whatever mech you’ve put together in between missions and then also get new parts to put together new mechs. If you’re not into the idea of putting six arms onto a car and then putting a rocket launcher in each of those arms and maybe a sword or a giant pair of scissors in there somewhere, then you’re probably not going to like Custom Mech Wars.
If, however, you played something like Armored Core 6 and thought, “Maybe this would be cooler if my character had weirdly human legs and a tank for a body?” then this is the only game that can satisfy that weirdly specific urge. It is patently absurd if you want it to be, but it can also be a hyper-serious mech-building game if you want to spend hours perfecting the parts and colors you’ll be using.
On top of the immense replayability of the game itself, thanks to being able to use different mechs and go through multiple difficulties, the game also has online co-op play for you and up to three other people to smash your way through.
Outside of the mechs, the graphics aren’t great, but they don’t need to be. It’s like being too worried about the fork you’re using when you’re eating chips from Burger King. The food is exactly what it needs to be and hits the spot in a sort of dirty way, and you’re going to keep coming back for more because it delivers exactly what you want every time. Praise be to Custom Mech Wars, and we can’t wait for Earth Defense Force 6.
