It's the 23rd century and the earth's natural resources are virtually exhausted. The ruling multinational conglomerates are searching for new raw material deposits in space in order to avert the impending catastrophe. One planet turns out to be a real El Dorado in this respect. But as the human conquerors in their armed Mechs encounter the extraterrestrial inhabitants a dreadful war breaks out. Players must researches into new technologies and continues to rearm their Mechs in Mytran Wars. Battles are fought in 3D landscapes - against the merciless AI or other human opponents in various multiplayer modes. There are 30 missions with 30 to 40 hours of single player game play. Dozens of unlockable extras and more than 250 researchable items on six different tech-trees. There are also four campaigns with two different fractions...

In Mytran Wars you must take control of a group of Mechs and battle your opponents with them. Mechs are massive machines that can be customised in many different ways, such as changing their weapons and armour. There are three basic types of Mechs. These include intruder (a weak, but fast moving Mech, which is effective at healing and aiding other Mechs); the destroyer (an all-round Mech which is fairly strong and can also move around a fair bit); and the devastator (a hardcore unit that is hard to destroy and can do some serious damage, but can not move very far).

The battles in Mytran Wars are very similar to Metal Gear Acid. The battle area is represented by a tiled map, where you and your opponents take turns at moving and attacking. During each turn you can move all your Mechs once as well as complete a number of actions including attack opponents, capture buildings or move your Mechs around so you can flank your opponents.

There are many parts for each Mech, which can improve them greatly, but they cannot be accessed straight away, you have to research them and not all of them can be researched right away - most have to be unlocked by completing certain scenarios in each mission. There are six different areas to research and in four of them there is a section for each type of Mech. These six areas include weapons, defence, movement, support, general and special.

When you have researched enough, you are able to make your own customised Mechs which you are able to take into battle. But you have to have enough money to first buy a Mech and then add the upgrades that you have just researched. You can buy any of the three different Mechs which range in price depending on how powerful each machine is. For example the intruder is the cheapest because it's not very powerful, whereas the devastator is extremely expensive because it is the powerhouse of the game. The destroyer is a mid-priced Mech because it’s average across the board.

As you play through the game you unlock characters which can use special abilities, like being able to move twice as far or with the ability to do 30% more damage, also they all have there own unique Mech type which cannot be change but can be upgraded. Characters are very important in a battle, seeing that if one of them dies the mission fails, but on the other hand they can be very helpful in winning, seeing that they normally have an advantage over other people.

The game has a lot of other modes that allow you to take a break from the story mode. There's 'skirmish' where you can play against the computer in several different game modes. Here you get to choose from a list of different Mechs from both armies in the game.

Mytran Wars is an extremely fun turn based RPG that allows for lots of different customisation and a fun campaign with unlockables for competing scenarios that would be near impossible without repeating. The characters in the game are well designed. They look fantastic and also have a good sense of humour making you look forward to each cut scene.

7

Carl Simpson