Machinicide PC Review
Summary: Machinicide is a boomer shooter that blends bullet hell and arena shooter mechanics with very light im sim ideas. Unfortunately let down by some performance issues.
3.1
Disappointing
I was a relatively early adopter of VR, first picking up a headset in 2015. In the decade that’s passed since then, I feel like I have built up a fairly robust resistance to the nausea and sickness that can sometimes be a side effect of that level of immersion. I have my VR legs, as it were, so it’s uncommon to have any issues while playing with a headset, and is virtually unheard of for me while playing a non-VR game, with only one instance springing to mind.
Until I played Machinicide. Every time I sat down and tried to play it, my head was spinning within five or ten minutes, and I had to take a break.
Developed by Gravity Shenanigans (which is a great name,) Machinicide is a futuristic boomer shooter that sells itself as both an immersive sim and paradoxically an arena shooter.
Arena shooter is probably the more accurate of the two terms. Players are tasked with breaking down hordes of evil robots into their constituent parts with a variety of weapons and abilities. Levels consist of a series of small arenas, strung together with small side rooms often filled with passcodes for doors and health and ammo supplies. Abilities are central to the gameplay, upon starting a new game one of several is chosen, including telekinesis and a hacking tool and these can be used to influence combat in your favour.
I can’t say I got a great deal of use out of these abilities, however. Having to aim at an enemy to hack it or fling it around the arena always felt like it was adding an extra step to dispatching foes, if an enemy is already in the crosshairs, anything other than shooting them feels inefficient at best.
There was one exception to this, though. Obtained early in the first level, the Pinatinator. This ability, when not on cooldown can turn one enemy into a glowing pile of weapons, ready to be collected. It functions in much the same way that DOOM Eternal’s chainsaw did. Ammo is relatively scarce, you see. Weapons are routinely emptied, thrown away, and replaced. Along with the player’s movement speed being somewhere around the speed of sound, it keeps the gameplay fast, and often frantic in feeling.
This emphasis on speed might be part of the problem. The breakneck pace combined with a low field of view (with no option to change it), and frequent stuttering of the camera all made my lunch want to evacuate the area.
From a presentation standpoint, Machinicide is reminiscent of something like Borderlands. An art style that isn’t fully cell-shaded and is cartoony but not overly so. I like it. In much the same way as it did in Gearbox’s looter shooter, it keeps arenas and enemies readable, which is essential in a game of this nature.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t have a good time with Machinicide. Which is a shame, because nausea aside, I liked most of what the game has to offer. It isn’t very polished; the audio is a mixed bag – the music is generally decent but loops rather quickly and repeats endlessly. Sound effects, weapons especially, are poor, lacking impact and often being annoying to hear more than once or twice.
The core gameplay is mostly fine, though. The lack of ammo and constant influx of new weaponry encourages experimentation and keeps the pace up. Machinicide isn’t far away from being a genuinely good game, it’s just let down by a few, albeit large problems. If the performance issues can be fixed and an option to change the field of view is added, then there’s hope for Machinicide yet.
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