Menace takes squad-based tactical combat and drops it into an anachronistic deep-space future where the remnants of a command ship must bring order to a lawless system using mechs, tanks and anything they can peel off their enemies.
I’ve been an ardent fan of Overhype Studios since I first spotted their debut title, Battle Brothers, back in Steam Greenlight. The squad-based, sandbox mercenary game is something that I’ve already clocked up over 400 hours in, and I’m sure there are several members of the team who have done the same. When the team announced Menace there wasn’t really much in the way of information, and that continued for what felt like the longest time. My assumption was that it’d still be squad based, but we might see more characterisation or customisation.
Menace certainly is similar to Battle Brothers in that it’s high risk and high reward. You can take a run at a max difficulty mission with just one squad leader, and you might well make it (especially if it’s Rewa with dual cannons, or Darby with full concealment), on the other hand, you might have almost every single squaddie reduced to rubble through aerial bombardments, acid or grenades. Placement is critical, managing your line-of-sight is critical, and — much to my own joy — suppression is critical.
As it currently stands, Menace drops you into a system with three planets, and those planets then have a habit of coming under attack from pirates or bugs. You run operations against them, each of them multi-staged and with varying objectives. You quickly gear up through black market purchases, being scrappy, and hiring in new pilots or squad leaders. You learn range, control and suppression. Then the Rebel Army show up, they’re tougher; You lean on skills and more advanced equipment, either overwhelming or outpacing them through great positioning.
Then something clever happens. The (current) final enemy, [Redacted], enters the scene and… suppression simply doesn’t work on them. Other things do, of course, but you now need to retrain yourself for this new enemy. It feels clever, getting you to really learn your equipment, to specifically build units for certain things, to switch in equipment for different missions in different places based on different objectives and enemies. It’s uncommon for games to do this, certainly to do it this well… in fact, one of the best games to have done this in recent memory is… Battle Brothers.
It’s not just this familiar loop that helped me enjoy Menace quite so much though. That lumpy anachronism that I mentioned earlier, where things feel a little Alien, a little Terminator… incredibly 80s, despite its future, sci-fi setting… it’s done in an incredibly masterful way. Add to that the fun little (although needing some work) events system and faction leaders and it already kind of feels complete — but only in a kind of ‘enough content but this game was rushed’ way… it’s actually only a couple of updates into it’s lengthy Early Access (v0.6.12+17134 at time of writing).
There’s one more thing that I can’t forget to mention, and that’s the writing. Each of the Squad Leaders and Pilots are incredibly well written and they each have a bunch of shouts that interlace with each other. From the strict, disciplined veteran that just won’t retire (and the plucky, glory hunter he inspired) through to the obnoxious mercenary who puts on a fake French accent, there’s no way you’re confusing any of the characters for each other. The Waybackers, Mercenaries and Marines don’t necessarily get along either, albeit not to the level of Jagged Alliance characters, but certainly enough that you’ll hear characters tell each other to shut up and ‘fuck off’.
Honestly, as it stands Menace is already a fantastic game, however I can’t wait to see them sort out the ship upgrade systems (which are currently a little shallow), add more SLs to the roster, and finish off the other planets and factions. I can easily see myself spending more time here than I did with Battle Brothers, and that’s not small praise.
Menace is currently available in Early Access
