M.A.S.S. Builder review

If you’re a mecha enthusiast, M.A.S.S. Builder is one of the most intoxicating digital playgrounds you’ll currently find on Steam. Developer Vermillion Digital understands the appeal of assembling hulking mechanical warriors, and this component eclipses every other part of the game. There’s dizzying degree of control over both the aesthetic and functional elements of your Mechanical Assault Skeleton Suit (or M.A.S.S.), feeling something like Gunpla but with the versatility of LEGOs.

Where M.A.S.S. Builder distinguishes itself from its mechanized peers is in the granularity of its customization suite. Every piece of armor plating, every limb configuration, every color gradient and mechanical joint feels like it was designed to be fiddled with for hours. Whether you favor bold Gundam-style coloring or militarized gunmetal greys, Builder can accommodate. Best of all, construction is mostly intuitive, allowing you to assemble some really great looking designs.

But it’s not all cosmetic tinkering. Your customization decisions have literal and figurative weight, affecting things like heat management, mobility, weapon mounting, and even balance. The result is a weapon-filled sandbox where aesthetics and engineering blend, letting you build the kind of creations that Armored Core, Daemon X Machina, and MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries aspire to provide.

From Workshop to the War Zone

However, the transition from your hangar to Builder’s battleground exposes the game’s shortfalls. At first, combat might seem fast-paced and kinetic, but fights quickly become routine, as you fight waves of duplicated enemies. Sure, the weapon variety is impressive and launching a salvo on lock-on missiles is incessantly rousing. But Builder’s strategic depth is paper-thin. Attempts to add sophistication, such as Quantum Break Mode short-term stat boosts or directional shielding aren’t prominent enough to separate Builder from a crowd of action games.

As unlikely as it might seem, musou games like Dynasty Warriors might be the best point of comparison when discussing M.A.S.S. Builder’s battles. Success mostly entails staying out of enemies telegraphed areas of effect and tapping a button to fire or swing a melee weapon. Combo systems seem underdeveloped, and the act of targeting enemies can be clunky, tarnishing the sense of fluidity as you’re flicking between targets. Customization does offer some variety in fighting style, but it can’t mask the game’s repetitive stage structure. All too often, your mech is pushed through a linear series of gated playfields with little tolerance for exploration. There’s resources to be gathered, but when mopping them up I felt more like a custodian that the last line of defense.

Largely, the campaign structure follows your typical RPG progression. Instead of mastering offensive and defensive maneuvers, you’ll usually just boost out of the way of an attacking Quark, which is Builder’s name for the extraterrestrial foes you’re confronting. Sometimes, you’ll have to protect an asset, unarm a mine, or scan a landmark, but these activities can feel like busy work for the breathtaking, bipedal killing machine that you just spent an hour modifying. From a world map that’s largely decorative to rather lackluster sense of scale, missions are mainly about gathering resources for more M.A.S.S. building.

The Grind Behind the Joys of Building

M.A.S.S. Builder attempts to inject a storyline into the proceedings, but the inclusion doesn’t add much to the package. Story sequences are presented in a visual novel style, detailing the threat of alien Quarks. While there’s a bit of character backstory to be found, the dialogue isn’t all that exciting. Usually there’s just enough intrigue to coast into the next mission, like a mech that’s running low on energy.

Graphically, the game harnesses the Unreal Engine to render high-quality mech models and mostly solid looking environments. Best of all, the game scales well, allowing for sixty frame-per-second fluidity on portable PCs like Steam Deck without much fiddling. But the contrast between how appearance and gameplay is pronounced. As such, I spent much of my time in the game’s photo mode component, capturing my digital handiwork.

A Builder with a Basic Battlefield

When compared with its mechanized peers, M.A.S.S. Builder delivers one of the best construction suites around. The game strikes a deft balance between accessibility and autonomy, allowing you to create some specular looking weaponized machines. But the game’s campaign and story are notably inferior, neglecting to provide a proper outlet for your creations. This imbalance might suit those motivated by mech creation, but more demanding players will likely crave a richer gameplay loop and deeper interactions.

M.A.S.S. Builder was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.