Review: Fight With Faulty Machinery In OVERRIDE 2: SUPER MECH LEAGUE
When dealing with big robots, a few things need to be in place to make them entertaining. Destruction, feelings of weight and a sense of strength are all essential pieces to have giant machines and monsters feel right. Override 2: Super Mech League gets a lot of things right in basic gameplay, but misses just as much in actual game features and performance.
Swinging those giant metal arms, throwing enemies and smashing kicks into opponents feel chunky, weighted and powerful. It feels like giant robots fighting each other, as it should. The destruction and environments are more varied and impactful than I thought they would be too. However, the actual combat as a fighting game is pretty lacking. The guard, perry and health systems all feel unpolished or even unresponsive. Every round felt like chaos and crunching metal, not well oiled machines using good technique and intelligence in battle. This game is fun to pick up, but not worth trying to master (or even entertaining to keep playing for a couple of hours).
The characters all look pretty unique, but that’s as far as it goes. In some ways, their attacks are unique, but their utility is about the same. Smashing buttons or using the same series of buttons works for every character. In other words, all the characters act and are played the same. Yes, there are different supers and special moves, but players will use each character in roughly the same way, so there is no reason to master or really experiment with a variety of characters other than appearance or one or two special moves.
Combat is obviously the key component in any fighting game, but all that fighting goes nowhere real quick if there is nothing to do. And unfortunately, Override 2 has very little to do. The campaign/story mode is just literally a bunch of randomly generated battles that slowly throw more money at the player to use on customization and purchasing new characters. All the battle types are basically the same and the rewards are so underwhelming that it almost becomes demoralizing how long it takes to do or purchase anything in the game. The PvP modes feel exactly the same, because they are the same, and don’t offer any more competition or reason to battle. Match making is painful to wait for, luckily you can just fill the room with A.I.s...but then what is the point in playing online in the first place?
I got the chance to try this game on the PlayStation 4 and PC, both games had the same features and functions. But the PlayStation 4 version felt like playing in slow motion. The performance level of this game is surprisingly bad. Every movement feels delayed and the frame rate drops all the time. The PC version is pretty stable and noticeably smoother.
I was surprised by this game. I was expecting a fun-filled, crazy, robot action-arcade game. In some ways it delivers, and maybe for a younger or MUCH more casual audience it would be fine. But the performance issues, lack of meaningful content and variety make this game entertaining for about twenty minutes before wanting to put it down to do just about anything else.
