I reviewed the first Mining Mechs game a while back, finding it to be a charming, zen-like experience with a constantly rewarding gameplay loop. This sequel (recently getting its release on all the consoles) certainly earns the upgraded title with all the new additions. Does that make it a better game? More of the same? Or does it collapse under the weight of new features and mechanics?
Gone is the quaint wooden airship that served as your home in the first game, replaced by a flashy space shuttle kind of vehicle. You’ll need that spaceship, as this time you’ll be mining alien planets for resources, which ties into the plot – I’ll get to that.
Each planet is rich in different resources with its own hazards. Although the hazards don’t vary too much, both ice storms and magma prevent mining, but you can travel through them. The DLC planet is included in this release, though with a unique hazard that lets you mine upwards but prevents building.
You’ll travel to each planet in turn, mining to a reasonable depth before digging deep for the finale of the story. However, there are multiple stages to each planet, and at this point, you ca cn switch between them, searching for the last few elements of the periodic table or completing each tier of tasks/missions.
It’s also possible to finish the story and still have nearly half the stages left to explore and complete. I still had several tiers of missions to complete after I grabbed the Platinum Trophy, which means I had more mech upgrades to acquire and a good number of elements still undiscovered.
Want to keep playing beyond that? You can even “Prestige” your upgrade tree. I was apprehensive about doing this, as it resets your upgrades, and I found it better to horde some upgrade keys before taking the plunge. However, it’s only necessary if you want to max everything out and be able to cut through granite like butter.
These missions do make this sequel feel like “more of a game” than the first outing, which at times felt like a meditative experience, but I have mixed feelings about them. Having specific objectives means you need to think about which resources you’re picking up and where best to find them. You’re also free to pick one of the six missions per tier, but once you start fulfilling a mission, you’re locked into it.
I couldn’t find any way to pause a mission or abandon it, so if you’re finding you picked up a harder challenge too early, you can’t just try something else. I also had an issue early on, as I could only carry a certain number of resources and didn’t realise you can store your gains in the bank. This made the early stages a bit of a juggling act, and it felt terrible collecting resources just to sell them off while making no progress on my goals.
The game doesn’t make a big deal of the bank. I wish I had realised sooner that it also lets you store resources for later. This would be much easier to use if you could track more than one mission at a time, but with some careful planning, it does mean you won’t be wasting too much time.
Being locked into a mission can be inconvenient and a bit annoying, but my biggest gripe was the apparent lack of consideration for gamepad controls. There aren’t many menus, but navigating upgrades and missions and selecting maps are all clearly designed for using a mouse. Moving to another map, I expected to be able to cycle options with the shoulder buttons, but had to D-pad my way through a maze of buttons to select a box and then use R2/L2, then navigate to another button and hit X to select.
The story isn’t a major feature, but it does attempt to say something. You’re visiting these planets because Earth has run out of resources, so the obvious solution is to dig deep into alien planets. You’ll get occasional messages after each minor victory of sending your spoils home that highlight just how frivolous and wasteful humanity has become.
Oddly, you seem to be welcomed by the native mole people, and there are some story elements that focus on how they’ve been exploited, but it then feels like the writers shied away from a strong anti-colonial message to make you the hero. I guess there’s still some environmental, anti-waste message in there somewhere.
It’s worth mentioning sound design. I appreciated that different mech parts have different sound effects. At one point, I was mining with a jackhammer, which gave me a nice burst of nostalgia for either Lemmings 2 or Worms. There’s also some ok voice acting, so you don’t have to rely on the text boxes.
Much like the first game, Mining Mechs, the soundtrack tends to sneak up on you. Generally, it fades into the background and just lets you chill out digging block by block, but I occasionally found myself bopping along, or I’d leave it on pause and realise I’d started just listening to the music.
I don’t remember seeing cave generation in the first game, but I did appreciate it here. Rather than solid walls of earth, you will find little pockets of air that make picking u resources nice and easy; it brings back fond memories of finding diamonds in a lava cave in Minecraft.
I can’t blame the developers, Delayed Victory , for adding greater depth and breadth to their sequel, but I can see the upgrades being divisive. Some will love them, others will find they add more frustration to what was a very chill experience. More than the first game, I found myself digging straight down just for the next objective, and that drained some of the fun from the process. I am aware that’s mostly my own fault, and the fact that I was racing for the Platinum.
If you know what you’re getting into, Super Mining Mechs is a fun time, and with plenty of content for its price tag.
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Developer: Delayed Victory
Publisher: Delayed Victory
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