War Titans

Genre: Auto-Runner / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

War Titans is a game that combines Auto-Runner and Arcade Game elements released on Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game puts players in the role of a mech that can transform into a car as it speeds down a road filled with enemies, with players needing to transform into the mech to take out heavier enemies and then turning back into the car to run over smaller ground troops.

The presentation here is decent, making use of 3D visuals for all of the game’s elements and actually having some pretty cool transforming sequences when you change from vehicle to mech and back, though these moments can cause the framerate to hitch for a moment. This is joined by a percussion-heavy soundtrack that seems suitable for this sort of high-action game, and is joined by a deep-voiced announcer chiming in every now and then.

When it comes to the gameplay, players need to time their swapping in and out of vehicles depending on what enemies you’re facing, and then players can make use of each vehicle’s unique abilities – the car can temporarily speed up, and it can also deploy buzz saws to either side to take out more enemies. Meanwhile, the mech has a machine gun and a heavy cannon.

Unfortunately, all four of the above abilities have limited uses, and if you run out, there’s nothing you can do to replace them. You can upgrade your storage capacity over time, but this is a somewhat time-consuming process. And because your progress through the game seems tied to how much you’ve upgraded, you’ll find yourself quickly getting into a pattern of heading out, getting as far as you can, dying, upgrading (or seeing you can’t afford an upgrade), and then trying again, over and over again.

Not only is this a highly repetitive process, it also exacerbates another major flaw of this game – the massive loading time you need to sit through each and every time you start a new run. I suppose I should also mention the clunky upgrade menus which have their own minor delays too, but really it’s the big loading screen at the start of each run that really drags down the rest of the game.

I feel like the idea of tearing through hordes of enemies as a car that transforms into a mech is a wonderful idea for a game, but War Titans saps the fun out of this concept by reducing it to an endless cycle of run-die-upgrade-repeat, a cycle that’s made much, much worse by nasty loading times. As a result, War Titans ends up being far more tedious than it is fun.

tl;dr – War Titans is a game that combines Auto-Runner and Arcade Game elements with gameplay that has you transforming back and forth from a mech to a car on a road filled with enemies. This fun concept is ruined by tedious, repetitive gameplay and horrible loading times. Don’t bother with this disappointment of a game.

Grade: D+

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