E3: iMech Hands On

By Nathan Mustafa, USA
for www.touchgen.com

Published: June 3, 2009

iMech condenses the big console mech thrills to work on Apple’s tiny screen. I was fortunate enough to sit down with a multiplayer build of iMech Tuesday evening and am pleased to report that the game looks to be doing well.

Admittedly, I was not intially wowed by what iMech does. Players are pitted against friends via the internet and battle using mechs in a simple death match situation. The range of vision is limited, controls are not pinpoint precise, and there was not a large amount of detail in the environment I saw. What I had to bring myself to realize was that I was playing on an iPhone and not a traditional gaming platform. As simple as that may seem, that realization really put iMech into perspective for me. I have yet to play a multiplayer game of this sort on the iPhone that I felt was worth mentioning and iMech has the potential to change this.

The fact that in my brief hands on I began to internally compare and contrast iMech to games like Chromehounds for the Xbox 360 is really a testament to the quality that this game looks to be bringing to the iPhone. Mind you, iMech seems to lack the scope of its console counterparts. Neither the graphics nor the controls blew me out of the water, but the whole experience felt solid and faithfully mimiced bigger games in its genre.

I have yet to hear news on pricing or total amount of players (there were four in my match) but if this is priced right I think this may fill the casual mech arena void that none of us knew existed. Fans of mech shooters should look out for more news on iMech, from what I have played I can say with confidence that it successfully brings the feel of its console big brothers onto the tiny hardware in a way interests me.

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

E3: iMech Hands On

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