M.A.C.H: Modified Air Combat Heroes review

Anyone who loves games will have come up with a game design at some point or other, whether it was a pub discussion or something that was drawn with crayons and posted to a games magazine. And when it comes to thinking of ideas for a specific type of game, a plane racing game for example, it's even easier to come up with something. Someone buy the people who design games at Kuju a pint or three as they have managed to come up with one of the most boring game designs ever.Look at any non-serious racer of the last 15 years or so and you can see all the ideas that are in this game. Choose vehicle, choose track and then do three laps racing against seven opponents while collecting inexplicable icons to give you weapons (mines, homing missiles, the ability to turn invisible...etc.) and a button to boost and if you win races you get money to buy upgrades for your vehicle. If that isn't enough, include a battle mode where the same vehicles, opponents and weapons are allowed to roam a little more freely with the aim to destroy each other. Include a number of challenges as well just to make it look like you put a bit of thought into it. Job done, game designed. On the plus side, when it came to actually making it there clearly was a bit of talent available as this is a very well made and well presented game. The art direction is extremely boring, but thanks to nice lighting effects, neatly made models and a constant frame-rate it is easily one of the better looking games around and has no technical problems at all. The plane handling is nothing amazing, but it works well enough and has no control issues either. And despite looking great, it doesn't even inflict massive loading times on you either and they are thoroughly manageable, especially by PSP standards. It all works extremely well and there are literally no flaws, no bugs, no little niggles at all. It's an amazingly well polished and capable piece of software. Aside from the lack of any originality, the biggest problem is the lack of an incentive to keep playing. After playing through the rookie career mode, GameStyle was left really quite impressed thanks to the technical capability and a pleasant, if unoriginal, range of tracks. Moving on to the next tier and it is the same tracks with slightly harder opponents. Move on to the next tier and it is the same tracks with slightly harder opponents and so on. In fact within the first twenty five minutes you've seen everything the game has to show you. Terrible.The lack of tracks would be more acceptable if more effort had been put into them, if short-cuts and different routes or anything similar but nothing of the sort is included. You're always funnelled in roughly the right direction and saved from having to think at all. Arenas are just as bad; a player who has spent hours exploring them will have no benefit over someone looking at them for the first time. Weapons are all in plain sight, there is nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide and there is literally no difference between the few available. All that makes the well implemented multiplayer modes (including the option to play from a single disc) feel a little wasted. There just isn't enough available to make them worth spending too much time with, although it is good fun while it lasts.The whole problem with M.A.C.H is that the technical sheen is of an extremely high standard and it makes how lacking it is in other areas even more infuriating. If it was just another half-finished piece of shovel-ware it'd be easily forgotten, but it came so close to being good. The closest it gets to originality is a button to do a barrel roll to avoid missiles (like in Afterburner, decades ago) and flying low to the ground increases how much boost you have available. Amazing. Why not take advantage of the freedom of flight rather than constraining planes to low level flying? Why not give the player something to explore? Why not include anything at all to make the thing worth spending time with? M.A.C.H is technically a near-perfect game; smooth, easy to play, good looking, well implemented multiplayer modes and so on. What it doesn't have is a single spark of originality or even the smallest bit of personality. Is polish more important than originality? GameStyle thinks not. Thankfully though, in this case it doesn't matter as there isn't enough included to make it worth buying anyway. Better luck next time Kuju.