Welcome to our review of Assault Gunners HD, the first real mech game on Nintendo Switch.
Assault Gunners HD puts you in control of the Peace Keeping Force known as DAT and along with your three allied Battle Mechs, you must attempt to save Earth’s Migrants and the Mars Colonies as a whole from the threat of the ANTS uprising. Who or what could be leading this threat against Mars, and the new planned perfect utopia for humanity?
Featuring 35 missions, Assault Gunners HD promises to bring a lot of action to the Switch. The first real pure mecha game too. Sadly this game is a bit of a disaster. It originally released back on PS Vita and it just does not play well. The right stick moves the camera around and it is very slow. At one point in the fifth mission, I was blocked in by several enemies and on top of a forced strafing to the left, the camera just did not move fast enough for me to move around and either make a run for it or mow down the ones behind me.
And it is not the only problem the game has… Imagine running out of bullets, right, you just use another weapon. But in Assault Gunners HD, you first need to select that weapon and then you can finally use it. What genius made the decision for us to make us push 2 buttons in order to fire an alternate weapon or even punch an enemy. Stuff like this could be made better, especially for a remake, I can’t be the first to bring this up, right?
Another weird feature is the forced strafe to the left. In Missions 4 and 5, I had problems with my mech as it strafed to the left, even when I was not touching the joy-con. I have not had this issue with any other games, so I was sure it wasn’t my equipment, proof being my Mario+Rabbids game, where a forced left click would be incredibly noticeable. But back to the issue, when I was standing in front of a checkpoint, which you need to be in the vicinity for, but your mech sometimes strafes to the left, forcing you to lose the reach so it breaks the countdown. This was quite possibly my biggest annoyance. It may not sound like much, but being on the edge of a cliff, moving right and still falling down the cliff on the left…. I hated this part.
I do however think that if they fix these annoyances that this game could really be the best pick for a mech game for a while to come. That feeling of playing a good Mech game, there are hints of it. Sure, there is just one of them on Switch right now, but I am sure this niche market will be filled in with several new titles soon, we all read the report that Nintendo hopes to have around 20 eShop releases every week, so mech games are bound to be inbound, maybe even some Armored Core or Gundam games ?
Graphically, this game is 6 years old and it shows. The mechs are simplistic and the enemies possibly even more. It just looks like textures were reused once too often and despite good use of menus and customization, the gameplay is what you will notice and that is just on par with mediocrity. In its current form, it does not stand out. A good base to have a great game, just a bad way to bring it.
In conclusion, Assault Gunners HD needs a big refresh and it would get two thumbs up. The base is right there, but the way it is presented… Insufficient. My rating is 40%.
