KO Mech starts out promising enough, with its bouncy, energetic presentation and soundtrack that provides a perfect match to the simplistic but satisfying core gameplay loop, all about flying around colorful mazes, punching the everloving crap out of hordes of other, less brawl-happy mechs, dashing into random debris to send it flying at mach-speed, bouncing off walls and pulverizing foes into cartoony dust clouds in a way that is as ridiculous as it is massively entertaining, before a room-sized boss delivers some surprisingly well-written comedic dialogue and gets punted into the stratosphere.
But it doesn't take long for the deliberate simplicity to really start biting the game in its shiny metal behind, as the levels start to become increasingly maze-like, filled with the same types of glorified punching bags you've been slamming about since the beginning and there is a high-pitched hissing sound as KO Mech starts to run out of steam and you start to feel like you've been playing for hours and so you take a gander at Steam's playtime counter and it says that you've only been playing for around 90 minutes and then the level select screen flashes before your weary eyes, with a good half of the game's increasingly samey mecha-maze-otrons still teeming with electronic evildoers and if you're anything like me you'll probably decide to pack it in.
Games greedily emptying out their modestly-sized idea buckets before the half-time break, only to later drag their feet across the finish line are dime a dozen, but when the total run time even with all the padding still falls short of the three hour mark, well then the thumb really starts to tilt down south. KO Mech is a bizarre case in a lot of ways, often feeling like more like a proof-of-concept, but polished to a shine and padded until the cracks start to show beneath its titanium hull. More variety in the levels or enemies could've helped, some added depth to the gameplay could've helped, or alternatively, how about just cutting away all the chaff and streamlining the whole thing into a sub-one hour romp, one that can actually sustain its initial energy throughout its whole runtime. With how cheap the game is, I doubt many people would have complained. As it stands, it's a charming, but ultimately underwhelming game that someone obviously poured a good bit of heart and effort into. A chromium-plated disappointment with a heart of gold.
Final rating: 6.6/10
originally written on 22/04/2024
