Mech Rage

To sum up, Mech Rage is a self-aware and amusing shoot 'em up that seems to relish parodying space marine tropes. It isn’t the best shmup out there — not by a long shot — but you might still find some fun with it.

Mech Rage is a game that you play out of curiosity or because you want something that wraps up quickly. It does the shooting elements well enough, but some fights can feel like slogs due to the puny amount of damage you deliver. The overall length of the game is very short, but that ends up being a positive given the generic story and the lack of variety in the presentation. The title isn't easy to recommend unless you can find it on sale.

Mech Rage is a challenging game, even on normal difficulty, but it's an overall fun but short experience. You will need to plan your moves and how you approach each room in the game if you want to stay alive because enemies can easily overwhelm you as soon as you make a mistake. The good news is that even if you die, you can respawn in the same room so that you can learn from what you did wrong and carry on until the end. Some levels have minor puzzle and platforming elements, which is something I'd like to see the development team expand on for a potential sequel or even for extra content for this one.

Mech Rage isn't a bad game, but it also isn't a great game. It fails to bring anything we haven't seen before to the genre. Despite not having too much variance from other top-down action shooters, Mech Rage wasn't entirely terrible but there wasn't anything that made me want to scream “Yes, come play this!”. The $9.99 price tag isn't too bad however you may want to wait for a sale to pick this one up.

I’m struggling to recommend this due to its length. It can be completed within an hour. Not that it's a bad hour, but there are games cut from the same cloth that boast tens or hundreds of hours of playtime from individuals, such as Enter the Gungeon or Binding of Isaac, with the roguelike features that are practically par for the course these days.