Game Reviews

Mecha Ace

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| Mecha Ace
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Mecha Ace
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| Mecha Ace

Choice of Games's interactive stories are reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure books of old, only far more complex.

Mecha Ace, written by Paul Wang, is the latest game from the dev. It puts great emphasis on how your choices build your character, and how the decisions you make forge relationships with the other characters in the story.

Mecha Ace's sci-fi world isn't extremely innovative, but it's definitely worth exploring, and the war-time setting makes for some interesting moral choices.

Mobile suit mecha ace

Mecha Ace is heavily inspired by the Gundam anime/manga series. Much like those space operas, Mecha Ace features pilots in giant robot suits wailing on each other. There's a hefty dash of politics thrown in too.

When the story begins you're piloting a mecha in an interstellar war. What happens from there is largely up to you.

Much like the things you say and do, your reasons for fighting are your own. Your words have long-term effects, even though you might not feel the consequences of your actions until much later in the adventure.

Choose your destiny

Like all of Choice of Games's stories, there are no graphics in the game. Everything is text-based, so oil up your imagination.

Most scenes are topped off with a choice that determines your path and your personality.

Do you let your enemies flee, or shoot them in the back? Do you egg on your war-hungry wingman, or rein him in? Do you fight to protect your loved ones, or out of a sense of duty towards your home planet?

Most importantly, is your mecha's reputation based on its speed, its strength, or its sweet custom paint job?

Mecha Ace is engaging even if you're not a big fan of mecha-based media. Paul Wang's writing is a bit dry and skimps on description, but it's not full of endless lists of jargon-y specs either.

Although if you're titillated by that sort of thing, you can find mech stats a-plenty in your status overview.

The action moves very quickly. The story is thick with choices, and you want to push on to see where they take you.

And, as with all of Choice of Games's stories, you can play through the game repeatedly. It's fun making different decisions in a new playthrough to see which dark corner of the universe you wind up in.

It's your life

If you're already a fan of Choice of Games's books, Mecha Ace is worth a purchase regardless of how you feel about sci-fi and mecha media. Its strength is in its choices and the places you wind up because of them.

And if you're not already familiar with Choice of Games, there are worse places to start than in the cockpit of a mecha.

Mecha Ace

Mecha Ace is a fast-paced text adventure game. It's full of choices that help keep the action interesting
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