Armored Core 6 is coming, and it’s coming soon. For those about to mech, you might be wondering what the best mech games are that you can jump into in the meantime. After all, patience may well be a virtue, but in this modern age of convenience and a frightening number of games, we say that waiting is for fools; you should just play other games while you wait.
To help you bridge the gap between whenever you’re reading this and whenever you can buy Armored Core 6, we’ve decided to make a list of the best mech games you can play right now that aren’t from FromSoftware. Instead, these mechs all offer something a bit different, but all of them are centred around, or include, awesome mechs to jump into and use to take down enemies. Or deliver pizza. We’ll get to that.
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is the most recent entry in the series, and it puts you in the shoes of a mech pilot fighting their way through different planets, all of which are filled with other mechs to shoot, buildings to walk through, and contracts to complete. It’s just a straight-up mech FPS fantasy that has you customising your mechanical rides as you wish, and it can also be played in co-op. We love co-op, because we love having friends who are definitely real.
Into the Breach
From action to strategy, Into the Breach just so happens to be a truly incredible roguelike game that’s also full of mechs. You have to guide your little group of mechs through multiple battles against alien invaders, but you get to see what they’re about to do every turn. It’s then down to your strategy and the abilities of your team to try and make them attack each other, keep them from damaging the few remaining towns, and keep your crew alive. Whether you fail or succeed, you then go onto the next timeline to repeat the process again, albeit with likely better gear.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is an exceptional adventure game that has you playing through an intense and heart-wrenching story set in an alternate version of our own timeline where giant monsters called Deimos invade Japan. You get to control each of the 13 protagonists and get to learn about them and their struggles. Then you also get to fight against giant monsters in mechs too. It’s the best of all worlds.
M.A.S.S. Builder
If your idea of a perfect mech game is one that lets you spend hours upon hours customising 38 different robot parts as you want, including the paint job too, then M.A.S.S. Builder is the game for you. This Early Access game is still being worked on, but it’s already one of the best mech games out there for the sheer volume of stuff you can tweak as you want. It lets you mess around with your weapons too. There’s also combat, but it’s not quite as gratifying. It’s not bad by any means, but we’re hoping it keeps getting improved as it moves through Early Access.
Earth Defense Force 5
Earth Defense Force 5 isn’t exclusively a mech game, but it does have mechs, and that’s all the excuse we need to talk about it. Among the four classes you can shoot oversized ants and frog people with, is the Air Raider. The Air Raider could be viewed as a support class, as it tends to attack via air strikes, orbital lasers, and even has healing items. It also gets access to the largest number of vehicles though, and one whole category of these are mechs with a mix of shotgun mortars, flamethrowers, missiles, and machine guns. There’s also one that’s so large that enemies can actually climb on it, and that one attacks exclusively with awesome punching attacks.
Pizza Titan Ultra
What if instead of fighting giant monsters, you just used a mech to deliver pizza instead? Well, that’s what you do in Pizza Titan Ultra, where your customizable mech has a pizzeria in the chest, and while you do get into the old scuffle with evil cyborgs, you also get to bring the good word of pizza to everyone you meet. It doesn’t need to make sense to be fun.
The Riftbreaker
Finally, we have The Riftbreaker. This is a base-building survival action game. That has you playing as an elite scientist/commander (they probably have ADHD) who works inside of a mech. You have to explore the areas around you, build a base to make yourself comfortable and to allow you to do research, and also shoot, hack, and slash your way through anything that moves.
