Go Mecha Ball Review - Let's Keep On Rollin' Baby
Maybe it’s a symptom of growing up as a kid in the 80s and 90s, but any time you give me a game where I can zoom around like you’re playing a high-stakes game of marbles, or transform between multiple forms, you immediately get my attention. GO Mecha Ball is a game that clearly ticks all these boxes (otherwise this would have been a horrible opening sentence). This game has you controlling a mecha ball that changes between a robot on legs with guns and a metal death ball that slams into enemies, sending them flying. It’s a high-speed, brawling experience where you need to clear the map of baddies to advance to the next level.
On the surface, GO Mecha Ball (GMB) is a rogue-like where you’ll complete runs, purchase more abilities, weapons and items, and then try-try again. It’s a formula we’ve seen time and time again, although in this case, it feels more like a mechanic that’s on the sidelines rather than its main focus. The main concept with GGMB is its fast and furious gameplay where you’re dodging enemy attacks and using a range of attacks, in the form of guns, abilities and collisions, to take them out. There are four acts and each act (or map variant if you will) has three levels with three waves each. As you progress through each level, you can choose from one of three enhancements in the form of new abilities or upgrades. This is completely random and which ones you choose will depend on your preferred method of playing the game. At the end of an act, you’ll come across a boss opponent, each having different attack patterns and offering a more unique challenge than the other.
Controlling your ball(s) (lol) can sometimes be a mixed bag (unintentional lol). You get the feel of momentum and speed when things start to get hectic. This can be from your intention or modifiers on the map that can launch you in various directions and quickly change your pace. What this can mean is you’ll sometimes find yourself running into enemy fire unintentionally and losing some precious health in the interim. Normally you don’t need to worry about falling off the edge of the map as there are barriers that keep you on the playing field, however, in the fourth act these are removed and you’ll lose health as a result of falling off the edge. This seemed like an unneeded challenge and a more frustrating one. It not only slows down the gameplay due to the necessity to survive, but also because the platforming elements from controlling your mech ball can sometimes be rather difficult.
This felt a little unintuitive and seemed to go against the game’s design of being quick and reactive. Slowing down your approach to combat and being more cautious was less fun than zooming from area to area. You’ll find early on there are some maps where the designs weren’t maybe as fleshed out as they could be. Sometimes there are enemies on top of pillars that can be very tricky to get to and you’ll find yourself having to try multiple times to land in a spot where you can take out the remaining bad guy to advance the level. This didn’t feel unfair or anything of the sort, but it was a tad frustrating and annoying to have to deal with.
Looking beyond these criticisms, the gameplay itself is mostly challenging in all the right ways. Learning which abilities and upgrades work best for you and learning how different enemies attack is a progressive experience that builds from one run to the next. Games that nail this dynamic make you feel like playing another run right after the previous and GMB achieves this well. The more runs I put in, the better I got and the more I could unlock in the form of additional mecha balls and upgrades/items.
GO Mecha Ball is quite a fun experience with very few things that will let players down. You know a game has done well if that intrinsic reward mechanism in your brain is activated and the urge to play “one more round” is alive and well. Perhaps the biggest criticism of this title is that the content overall feels a little low. Yes, they’ve focused on many of the right areas and it’s fun to play, but it can feel a little thin, perhaps DLC or a sequel could rectify this, but going into this game, don’t expect a ton of variation here. GMB delivers a fast and fun experience that has all the trademarks of something that could go a lot deeper but unfortunately falls short.
Go Mecha Ball was reviewed on the Xbox Series X with code kindly supplied by the Publisher.
