XOL: Space Mech Wars

The gameplay itself is what you're coming here for and its amazing.

Despite the game not having proper voice acting, making the story a bit hard to follow and the characters feel like all the same person, this game knows what knows what mech fans want from the mech genre. its high action and fast paced, but its also a sim. a completely diegetic HUD thats mapped to the cockpit of your mech and not your character helps put you right there in the seat of the mech. seeing the world through the mechs display and being able to open the cockpit and see the world in full resolution, while seemingly having no gameplay purpose, really adds to the experience in a way you just dont get from other games.

Typically im not a fan of fast paced flying mech games, but when they put this much effort into the sim aspect of it i cant help but fall in love. theres definitely some crude aspects to the game and a few jank areas, but the visuals and art direction are just strong enough to keep you immersed without trying to assault your screen with high fidelity, over detailed models. where the game really shines is both in audio and mission design. the sound effects, whether they are all hand made or from stock, fit the aesthetic perfectly and have that strong, space age, sci-fi punch that is indicative 80s-90s mecha anime without sounding dated at all. one of your weapons is a cannon that fires a single, massive, highly destructive, highly explosive round that absolutely decimates the massive warships and the sound of the round hitting a ship and exploding feels like it will singe your eyebrows off. the humming and whirring of the mech itself, zooming through space, feels so strangely familiar yet i cant tell what it reminds me of, other than that its exactly what you would expect a machine like this to sound. its one of those pieces of ambience that really hits the back of your skull and tickles your brain in all the right places especially when using the thrusters. as for mission structure, im extremely impressed. a lot of mech games think they can just throw you into a mission and have you shoot things and expect that to be fun enough for 6 hours, but XOL knows better. each mission feels completely different from the last as you go about executing multiple objectives through each mission that flow perfectly into each other. even if the moment to moment gameplay wasn't fun, the mission design would be strong enough to carry the game, thats how good i feel it is. you really never feel any monotony. as for the moment to moment combat, its surprisingly nuanced despite having features like auto lock. going up against massive capital ships that have multiple cannons that can decimate you in an instant may seem like an impossible task for a single mech, but you have so many ways to approach the situation that even when you are extremely low on armor, you still feel like you have a fighting chance that doesnt require you to slow your pace down to a grinding halt. simply approaching situations from a different angle can give you the advantage and if you really use all your tools effectively, you can really break this games ankles.