by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Override: Mech City Brawl
- Developer: The Balance Inc.
- Publisher: Modus Games
- PS4, Xbox One, PC
It took a lot of reprogramming for me to get into Override: Mech City Brawl. Out of the gate it reminded me of other arena fighters like Gundam Versus or ARMS. Override is slower paced, focused more on physicality than speed. If other arena fighters present their characters as nimble fighter jets, then Override’s mechs are thrashing heavyweight boxers, crushing the city underfoot as they battle. It’s awkward to start with, but as I adapted to it the game started to show promise.
The largest stumbling point of Override is its more physics based animation system. Each limb is operated separately and assigned to a shoulder button or trigger. The left kick animation results in a unique animation, but all other buttons move the limb independently. It results in some awkward looking attacks and limits the dynamism of animation. Instead of strong, readable poses, most attacks end up with your mech standing straight up and sticking a limb out. Those dynamic poses still exist, but they’re limited to those left kick and special moves. It’s functional, but it made me wish each attack functioned closer to the left kick, with its own animation and function.
Specials occupy a strange space in Override. Brawling is clearly the main focus, but the animation system leaves most fighters feeling similar in terms of how they approach the core hand to hand combat. This leaves specials attacks with the task of differentiating the characters, though the long wind ups and the requirement that you have a bar of meter for each special brings them more in line with the character abilities of a MOBA or hero shooter than traditional fighters. Abilities range from the usual long range shots, to teleports and enemy stunning shockwaves. Each mech generally has at least one very powerful special that sets up big damage, which turns Override into a different game when someone has meter.
The long wind up on normals and threat of being caught in a special creates an interesting neutral game. Matches often began with my opponent and I circling, trying to lure each other into whiffing an attack by dashing in or jumping and threatening a dive kick, all while stomping through the city to build meter. Whenever one of us picked up a weapon or built a bar of meter then it was time to go in.
Or, because it is online, they’d run in right away and overwhelm me while I was still figuring out how to block. At least one found success with Rocca, a Mayan styled robot who thrashed me with an endless onslaught of punches and kicks. These shenanigans are almost welcome compared to the number of opponents who find a slight advantage then proceed to run away for the entire match. Being overwhelmed at least gave me the opportunity to find my opponent’s patterns and use blocks and counterattacks to create openings, instead of the infuriating game of cat and mouse that’s possible thanks to the stamina system and large arenas.
Both attacks and dashes use up stamina, and too much of either causes an overheat, preventing anything but regular movement to be used. So not only is it a viable strategy to run away, doing so leaves the opponent in a more vulnerable state. Thankfully most of these shenanigans happened in casual matches as opposed to ranked, but it still exposes core problems with overall systems.
Even after adjusting, Override feels sluggish, making it difficult to react or time follow ups. There’s no grab, so shields need to be beaten with charged normals, which are beaten by regular normals, but the wind up on every action often meant I felt I didn’t have an option except making a hard read and performing a parry, each which need to be timed correctly on top of correctly guessing which limb the opponent is attacking with. Not that charge attacks don’t have their own issues. They’re hard to read during the chaos, so it’s not always clear when they’ve charged up and can be let off. That’s especially true of jump kicks, which can take long enough to charge that I hit the floor frequently before I could use them, leaving me standing there vulnerable.
Even when I did get those jump kicks off, they’d often whiff and drop me right in front of my opponent to be punched out. Part of this is straight up poor spacing on my part, part of it is the slightly tilted camera angle making me unconsciously miscorrect to the side, and part of it is how little tracking attacks have. Because of the complexity of 3D stages and cameras, arena fighters often correct the trajectory of attacks, homing in on the opponent. This allows dynamic camera movement and keeps the focus on your intention and tactical choices, rather than aiming in the exact direction of your opponent.
Even when locked on at close range Override has weak tracking on attacks, making it possible to be be right next to an opponent and start punching the air next to them. This makes followups and combos difficult, creating situations where I’d whiff very long attack animations while standing next to a totally still opponent. I get the feeling that Override wants to make angling attacks part of the skillset you need to learn, but often it felt like the lock-on being uncooperative and causing me to lose an opportunity even if I’d made the right tactical decisions.
None of these issues break Override, but they do create a game that feels more fussy than I’d like. As a casual fighter it still has plenty of appeal, with interesting mech designs and abilities, and strategic combat that’s enjoyable after some adjustment. It’s clear that Override has some serious intentions as a competitive game, however, with a season pass of characters already in development and an Overwatch style loot system for unlocking cosmetic accessories and skins to keep players invested in online competition. There’s a lot of promise here, but Override, as it is now, is lacking in the consistency that keeps me coming back.