Summary

• Representing the UK in a mech battle tournament brought back nostalgic anime feelings from my past.
• Customizing mechs for PvP matches was crucial, aiming for long-range attacks and teamwork.
• Despite our efforts, the US team emerged victorious in the World Cup, showcasing different strategies.

If you’d told me a month ago that I’d be competing in and representing the UK in a video game World Cup, I would have laughed in your face. I’m not big on esports, I’m not even small on esports. Yet there I was, dressed to impress in my own little uniform and ready to throw down for my country in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Megaton Musashi W: Wired.

Set in 2118, the Earth finds itself destroyed by an alien force known as the Draktor. The last 🔴few remaining survivors live in the facility Shelter Ixia and rely on heavy weapon mechs to fight back against their alien aggressors. An enhanced version of the original Megaton Musashi, Wired offers a mixture of anime-style story sections where you move around different locations speaking to other characters with its mecha battle gameplay, where you undertake missions to progress through the narrative.

As I thought about it, I realised the only other mech game I’d ever played was 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, 🃏which I imagine is not as mech-y as something like Armored Core.💯 Despite my unfamiliarity with the genre, as my mech travelled great distances, past small buildings and mountain ranges, and I saw the interactions between different characters, a wave of nostalgia hit me. My teenage years were my peak anime period. I watched a lot of Gundam Wing and Escaflowne, while Macross Plus was a particular favourite of mine. Megaton Musashi brought all of those feelings flooding back.

The🔴 Macross Plus theme ๊is so good it gets stuck in my head just by thinking about it.

The Megaton Musashi W: Wired World Cup Final

I’d never played Megaton Musashi, but🦋 given that it has never launched outside of Japan before, nearly everyone competing was in the same boat. We had a practice session, checking out the story missions and taking on swarms of enemies or huge hulking boss battles to get to grips with how the controls worked and learned how to customise our mechs.

During this time, I learned I was great with one particular unit, the titular Musashi, so much so one of theꦑ Level-5 team complimented me on my progress and encouraged me to tackle the bosses on the hardest difficulty. Customising your mech is one of the biggest selling points of the game, as you can finetune it to each limb, body part, and weapon to suit your preferred setup, and swap out attacks via its Motherboards.

Though I stumbled at first to realise everything I had at my disposal, as I noted just how detailed it was and found my balance, I was filled with confidence for the tournament ahead. But that con💞fidence was very short-lived.

But the mec🐷h I had for the tournament turned out to be a different mech. As a result, I wasn’t great. In fact, I was pretty rubbish. My little team was rounded out with pro skateboarder Ryan, actor Max, and our translator Miki was present to cheer us on﷽ every step of the way. Despite floundering with the different mech, my team was quick to show me the ropes and get our game plan together.

Each mech had been customised and nicknamed to suit the country it was representing in the World Cup. For the UK, our mech was called 𝐆the Impꦆerial Guarder, while China had the Kung Fu Tiger.

Our plan for the PvP matches𒉰 was simple: divide and conquer from afar. We wanted to focus solely on ranged attacks while staying out of range of our opponents, and we definitely wanted to stay separated to avoid all getting hit with the same attack at once. We customised our mechs to focus on long-ranged attacks, swapping out body parts and weapons to maximise our attack stats and choosing Motherboards—custom parts that dictate your special attacks—🌺that kitted us out with homing missiles.

In our first match against Spain, trying to stay away from rival mechs that were keen to get up close and personal and bash us proved trickier than we’d hoped. As a cutscene started that showed someone was about to unleash a powerful combination move, I thought we were done for. Fortunately, Max quꩵickly told me he’d triggered it and this much-needed boost helped us turn the tide of battle. As the last remaining seconds of the match ticked down with us in the lead, we scattered. We ran from our enemies like cowards to prevent them from scoring against us and to secure the win. It worked - we lived to fight another day.

In all honesty, I didn’t think we’d even get that far. No shade to my team; entirely because of my own skills, I was surprised and happy not to fall at the very first hurdle. But our biggest challenge was yet to come, and it put my professional pride at stake as we went head to head against the US, r൩epresented by our arch rivals Game Rant. I knew if I lost to them, I’d never live it down.

With a renewed interest in winning, we decided to refocus our mech customisation and chose partꦇs that increased our speed, but cost us more points if downed in battle. Unfortunately, our chance at victory was quickly quashed, oblitera𝄹ted before the match timer even ran out.

Perhaps if we had stuck with our original loadouts we would have been more successful, but I doubt it considering that the US team went on to win the World Cup, even beating off the Japanese team. Losing to the overall winner softened the 🔯blow somewhat, and yes, TheGamer team did not approve of my failure.

While I didn’t get too much time wit📖h the story mode of Megaton Musashi W: Wired, the combat missions felt fast-paced and offered up chaotic fun. I wasn’t even always sure where the enemy was as it would be some giant spacesꦑhip thing that flew off to the mountains for a bit before returning. Sometimes you’d have smaller mechs jumping around the battle arena that you had to try and pin down. I thought I would be terrible going into it, but I thrived during boss battles and the more I kicked big robot dinosaur butt (yes, that really was one of the bosses), the more I wanted.

Like most games that offer multiplayer, Wired’s re🦩al charm comes from having fun by playing with others, working out strategies, and overcoming challenges together. Even when we lost, those panicked moments of trying to desperately turn the tide of battle were funny because we were in it together.

Watching how each team approached matches with different strategies was particularly interesting. While I spammed any special attacks I picked up immediately, the Japanese team instead saved them all for the end of each match. Despite coming close to losing a few times in their first bout against China, it meant Japan hammered home the win in quick fashion when they chose to unleash hell. But much like our str☂ategy failed us a second time, Japan lost out to the USA when it mattered the most. Better luck next time, I guess.

Megaton Musashi W: Wired launches today for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC. The anime is now available on YouTube and other streaming services, such as Crunchyroll.