Mytran Wars review

You’ll have to forgive the rubbish title. Mytran Wars is actually a turn-based strategygame with a killer sense of humour and even deadlier mechs. The Game Boy’s Advance Wars is its obvious inspiration, so that means a grid-based battle map and stat-busting battles.

This is a painstaking chess game where you must weigh up every move, assessing every possible threat from all angles. It’s tiring (albeit addictive) in long spells, partly because there’s an assumption that you will have played this sort of thing before – and you’d be hard-pushed to find anything else like this on PSP save for, at a push, R-Type Command – and even that doesn’t have quite the complexity seen here. From an elevated isometric perspective you must command your giant mechs through towns and valleys, seeking out and destroying your enemy.

There’s no hand-holding intro to the action: the full spectrum of moves and objectives is dropped into your lap from the off. This might make the game fairly inaccessible and rather foreboding to newcomers, but on the other hand it’s refreshing to see the full range of tactics and upgrades available from the start.

As you battle you’ll earn cash and scientific research points which allow you to develop your mech, thus protecting your all-important commanders – if they die it’s mission over. You can take chunks out of your opponents in a similar way, so you could slow them down or take out targeting systems depending on the nature of the task at hand. It’s your call. And with a slew of bonus missions to complete, there’s plenty of replay value too; this in addition to 30-plus hours of play. A final warning – some may baulk at the evil learning curve.

Jun 30, 2009