Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons (PC) Review

Mechs and Mercs does a lot of things right for this type of game: the graphics are pretty good, and big firefights are very fun to watch as rockets and lasers are raining in on both sides of the conflict. Likewise, the game spices things up with a lot of different goals, such as rescue missions, kill them all, defend, and so on. Likewise, each squad has a skill tree to level up.

Combat takes place on an overhead third-person view with the player controlling one-to-six squads of four-to-six people that essentially function as one unit that grows weaker as people die. They are controlled over the map, killing enemies, taking cover, and getting mission objectives. User choices mostly come down to what squads to use as there is little more than 'attack/move' options, with some focus on terrain and positioning for good measure. When done right, the battles are fun, with vast smoke and explosions everywhere, but this only occurs early on for the most part, since the action slows down considerably to crawling positions.

However, not all is rosy. This is not to say the game is bad - it's not - but for a tactics game there are some fundamental flaws. The most notable thing right away is that there is literally no way to tell stats of guns. These types of games live and die on trying to find the best weapon - is a slow fire, one hit weapon better, or maybe a light, rapid-fire gun? Here, though, it is impossible to know, and it is a pretty fundamental omission. Also, the equipment never changes, with no upgrades, just the same kit at beginning lasting until the end.

For example, at the base different squads can be equipped with different preset weapons (never to be upgraded, sadly), like a choice might be 'six assault rifles' or 'three laser rifles, three shotguns' or 'three lasers, three shotguns' and beyond this there is no clue as to any weapon properties. Do shotguns have a knockdown, do assault rifles shoot faster, or is there any difference between assault or laser rifles? These questions are never answered. There are skills that add to 'accuracy' but this stat is vague and mysterious - there seems to be no difference as all rounds are on target anyway.

There are a lot of unit squads to pick, and initially this seems pretty cool. There are three major types of armour: light, medium, and heavy, and then different roles of recon, engineer, assault, and support. The squads stay locked in this all game, so there might be a heavy support that is slightly different than medium support. Each role has a slightly different skill tree it can put points into, and these typically take about 10-16 points to finish, with players getting four per level-up and the units hitting a maximum at Level 6. All of this is fine, and sounds great, but unfortunately it leads to some problems. First, for some strange reason, the low level cap means most units will never 'max' their stats, and often will reach max level after about five battles.

However, the real problem comes here and in the tactical part. The tactical part gets very cheap and somewhat hard unless the player uses very imbalanced skills. For all intents, despite there being something like 20+ combinations of units, it really comes down to two questions: can the unit take more than one hit, and can it call down laser strikes. Support units can answer affirmatively to both, Recon can answer yes to laser strikes. Every other unit is completely and utterly outclassed, short of engineers that are merely needed as a 'key' to get through doors on missions.

There are things to upgrade on the ship, but they often don't matter. There is an airstrike ability - it's about the only good one - but it is outclassed by abilities that support units learn, and the rest are useless. For instance, being able to hold more squad types or improve carry weight of the shuttle - none of it matters. Even the 'mechs' of the title get stomped by heavy support units. If the player tries to field one, the only thing they can do is take a decent hit, but they move slow and don't learn skills and are, therefore, inferior.

In combat, units die very fast unless they are supports or have heavy armour, which means every light armour unit cannot function in combat at all, whereas a heavy support unit (the best combo in the game) can mow through six squads simultaneously without a single death as long as the enemy isn't heavy support as well. The only negative is that they walk slowly, so often wait for minutes is necessary as the units move in, mow down, and then move on. Experimenting leaves little to show other than deviation from the support units is less than ideal - even so called 'assault' units pale in comparison, not doing enough, or dying too fast.

The absolute craziest is the laser strikes. Recon and support down one tree to get an orbital laser and, although impressive, it shows how broken the game is. Once every three minutes or so the squad can instantly cast the ability, which will generally instantly kill one-to-three enemy squads or turrets (the hit zone is a bit wonky on it at times). This can be done across the map and at any time. Contrast this with 'grenades' for assault, which takes the unit to walk up (often dying in the process) and wait for it to be thrown and explode, doing minimal damage.

It cannot be understated how slow the maps eventually become. The enemy vastly outnumbers the player and is often bunkered in, meaning there are only two real options: laser strike crawl them or have the heavy support units slowly walk in pounding, pulling back to overwhelm enemy heavy supports. Early on the game is fun, units are moving fast, rockets are flying, and maps are open. Then random difficulty spikes happen, like one level when the player is taking on aliens and the standard attack/move suddenly gets completely overwhelmed and everyone is dead in seconds. Thus begins the slow crawl the game becomes of moving a bit with support in front, gun a few guys down, call laser strikes when ready, crawl forward, all while ironically the assaults or light armours become a 'dead weight' on the team as they simply can't hang.