by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Assault Gunners HD Edition
  
• Developer- SHADE Inc.
  
• Publisher- Marvelous
  
• PS4, PC
  

For a while, Assault Gunners HD seemed promising. Mechs feel weighty, guns fire off with heavy feedback that makes even basic weapons feel substantial, and there’s the eternal appeal of collecting parts and building up your machine. But the longer I stayed with it the more the flaws began to dominate the experience and by the end of it Assault Gunners had become a chore. 

There’s too many small problems that make it feel messy and incomplete. The porting process from the Vita is beyond basic, only bringing up the resolution without adjusting any other aspects. Draw distance is low, textures muddy, and the UI takes up a bizarre amount of space. Despite that the framerate still fails to stay consistent. And for whatever reason the L2 trigger slowly turns you left. R2 does nothing. Neither are noted in the control scheme. 

None of these damn the game, and I was willing to overlook those problems as long as the fights remained interesting. Instead the game begins with basic arenas with some mildly interesting variance in terrain, then leaves them behind for large flat areas where enemies spawn out of nowhere right on top of you. Even the vague sense of place it attempts in the early levels are thrown away, leaving you in boxes full of dull encounters. And it almost seems like it’s aware of this–right after the stage where I decided I was better off just rushing past enemies it threw up barrier that could only be passed once every enemy was destroyed. 

Even for a such a straightforward and simple game, Assault Gunners HD ends up promising more than it can give. It’s too sloppy, too haphazard to recommend. A bad mech game is a bummer, one that starts promising is even worse.