Developer: Horberg Productions
Publisher: Horberg Productions
Platform: Nintendo Switch
It’s kind of sad how more triple-A developers haven’t made more side-scrolling shooters in recent memory. While Cuphead did get a degree of success, making a ton of money for Microsoft and will likely do the same for Nintendo in a week, it’s still considered an indie game and most mainstream developers won’t touch the genre. That’s a real tragedy since titles like Mechstermination Force show us why these games were popular, to begin with.
From the creators of Gunman Clive, a brilliant Mega Man-like series of games set in the Wild West, Mechstermination Force borrows the boss rush concept of Cuphead with the shooting mechanics of Contra, which makes for one hell of a good time.
With four characters to choose from (though they don’t play any differently from each other) and 14 mechanical bosses to take on, Mechstermination Force gives players a decent amount of game to digest. While 14 bosses, which equates to 14 levels, doesn’t sound too long, the bosses in this game will challenge your reflexes and should eat up a good amount of your time until you memorize their pattern.
This old-school mentality of “play until you get good,” will likely be appreciated by fans of shooters like Metal Slug or Contra, though it won’t win over anyone who aren’t fans of the niche genre. The graphics might, since its colorful and has a nice Saturday morning cartoon art style that looks great on handheld mode.
Overall, if you’re in need for some old-school shooting, you could do far worse than Mechstermination Force. The controls are great, graphics colorful, and there is a lot of replayability, with the number of characters to use, not to mention a Time Attack Mode that lets players make their own records for these boss fights.
Review code provided by Plan of Attack
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