GRIT AND VALOR:1949 REVIEW ON XBOX
Grit and Valor: 1949 is a diesel-punk real-time tactics rogue lite set in an alt-history World War 2.
The premise is you are in command of an elite Mech Squadron. Think fast and battle the Evil Axis forces to liberate Europe.
The game boasts real time team-based tactics, with the ability to slow-down and pause battles. Upgrade your mechs, pilots, and HQ. Procedurally generated buffs and arena to ensure every battle is unique.
Accessibility
With regards to accessibility, there is a very good variety of options available with accessibility at the forefront of its design. A vast array of visual options alongside button remapping, high contrast mode, colourblind mode, item, mech and enemy colour options. Audio options are better than the norm too, with menu, speech and pilot voice adjustments, which means a lot more people can really enjoy what this game has to offer.
Gameplay
From the moment I saw the trailer of this game, I knew it had something special that I wanted to play. Already on PC, this game has now been ported to consoles and even has VR capability to those who can utilise it. The game itself is a blend of different genres built around the premise of movement and positioning is king. Think of it as a mech version of chess with its grid placements, and you can gauge roughly what is instore for you.
After a quick trailer explaining that the evil Axis has almost managed to win WW2 with the help of some new discovered tech, called Mechs, you the allied forces I pushed back to a remote island in Scotland. Something a bit poetic about that location I think, and its here that you have the opportunity to rebuild and strike a decisive blow to the enemy, if you can get a Huge EMP bomb to their stronghold in Germany.
The tutorial begins with explaining you the basics of movement, the importance of height and the core component of the ammo system. A bit like rock, paper scissors, there is a triangle badge in your top right hand corner which explains which ammo has strengths and weaknesses. Explosive ammo is strong against ballistics, but weak against fire. Ballistics are strong against fire but weak against explosives, and of course fire is strong against explosives, but weak against ballistics. This is key and something you will need to refer back to in every battle as enemies attack.
You begin with choosing the colour of your command vehicle, then the choice three mechs to take into battle, each with specific ammo types and stats. Then you choose the pilot, each with their own specific attributes to control them, and from there the beginning of your mission starts. So where does the rougue-lite aspect come into the game, well you will die, repeatedly. However every time you die, you’ll get better, unlock new mechs, new technology, and new upgrades to push ahead further. There are four maps to conquer with a big boss at the end waiting to take you down.
To get to said boss, you will need to choose a path through a number of battle arenas. On the way to the boss there is also blackmarket shops, and many mystery locations which will either provide you with something great or something bad. Each battle arena provides four waves of enemies to clear out before you can move on. Each wave provides a number of different enemy types with the varying ammo combinations ready to take down you mech team.
Another rogue-lite aspect is at the beginning of each wave a supply crate will be dropped of somewhere in on the map. Collecting this will provide you with a selection of three randomly generated items that either buff mech stats such as critical damage and fire rate. Or provide an upgrades for a specific pilots ability, like increased repair charges or providing fire damage for your dropped mines. This ensures regardless of the upgrades you do at your HQ, you will always be getting stronger with each battle to give you some slight change with the big boss that awaits. A number of battle arenas will also provide you with side missions alongside kill all wave enemies. These range from Defending civilian homes, supplying petrol, taking radio towers and destroying missile silos. Completing these as you kill enemies waves isn’t necessary to progress, but in doing so you will gain bigger rewards at the end of each battle arena. The rewards are Valor, which can be used to upgrade pilots. Blueprints unlock new mechs and their perks. Black Coins can only be used during runs for black market shops, which can repair mechs mid-run and also provide some juicy stat buffs.
Completing those battle arenas will let you gain several different currencies which can be used for in unlocking and upgrading your chosen team back at HQ. It’s a lovely very simple and straightforward system that if you have the currency, things are instantly unlocked, and ready for use. Did you manage to get 3 blueprints, well now you can unlock a new mech, or even a new mech ability? Speaking of HQ, it’s here within the selection of buildings where you can really tailor your chosen mech and pilots, with a number of unlockables that will give you the edge in battle. The lab unlocks special permanent unlocks such as more health modules for the command vehicle, additional mech modules, and even permanent enhancements to certain abilities. The archives allow players to see their past victories and the data that got them there.
The Hangar allows Mechs, which have a number of slots that can be unlocked, to plug in a variety of parts. These parts buff you mech, and can be found on the battlefield or created if you have unlocked the ability to do so. Once you unlocked the ability to overclock your mech, you can also unlock permeant perks which require a specific power requirement that each part you have allocated in your mech provides. For example a low tier pilot chair will provide a small buff and have a power rating of 1. A high tier pilot chair will provide a huge buff and a larger power rating. The bigger the power rating the more permanent perks you can unlock.
The Barracks allows your Pilots, which have a special ability to be upgraded and have three stats that can be upgraded from the beginning, with two more stats that can be unlocked as you progress. At the beginning you only have access to 3 pilots, but as you complete each map, more is given to choose from and upgrade. The pilots abilities are unique to each character and depending on how you spec your mech can greatly enhance the mechs capability in the battlefield. For example, I made one mech that was a high damage sniper, but in doing so was light on armour. Thankfully one of the pilots special ability was to heal that mech directly, a comfort in the most hectic of battles.
Speaking of battles these can range from simple to intense pretty quickly as you move your team to locations around the map to out manoeuvre the enemies as they sweep across the arena to kill you. This is because you cannot specifically target enemies, instead your mech AI will target what ever is closest in its range. You also cannot fire whilst moving, so this means the combination of locating your team so they don’t fall to enemies ammo attacks they have a weakness to can be tough. But at the same time positioning them to take advantage of others weaknesses, is fun and challenging being it is in real time.
This is also the same for the enemy so ensuring you are in a good position before they attack you is critical. Another important piece in your army is the Command Vehicle. It is completely defenceless vehicle that commands the mechs, and while it is heavily armoured, it is vulnerable to attack regardless, and slow. The benefit of the Command Vehicle though is that is it can either repair mechs or deploy a sentry gun to attack enemies, depending on which ability you chose before starting. However, if this vehicle is destroyed or all your mechs are, its game over.
Now that may sound painful for some, so the developers have added in slow down and pause options for the battles. To ensure these can be toggled on and off at your will, I would recommend you bind them to your Movement stick with it being toggled on when you click them, as they are not bound to any button when you first start. This allows you to carefully gauge where to position each mech relative to the oncoming onslaught. To move said mech, you highlight said mech, and click on the grid position you wish them to move too. Again I would bind each mech to a specific button, to ensure speedy selection. The mech’s AI can be a bit twitchy and I did find in some instances the mechs could not work out a path around a particular landscape or your own fellow mech, so I needed to reposition in order for them the get to the correct location. Whilst this can be a bit of a pain sometimes, I can’t moan too much as this also befalls the enemy AI as well to sometime my advantage.
Overall, this is really fun to play and whilst it maybe a little simplistic in its tactics for some, the challenge is there on the later maps and the bosses.
Graphics
Visually the game has opted for cellshading similar to that of comics in its overall look and style, which I must say suits the diesel-punk theme very well. The graphical fidelity also holds up well in battles as you can enjoy mechs burning, shooting and exploding enemies across the map in one go. Each arena is also varied in its topography, with low points and high points in numerous locations to ensure your mech can take advantage of the elevation stat boost. To combat camping at the higher points, side missions and enemy spawns change with every wave, so whilst you may have been on top of the hill in one attack, you may very well be at the bottom of another.
To help out thought there is a number of cover wall locations generated in on the map allowing for your mechs to hide behind and take the brunt of the attacks against them. However, these will slowly be destroyed so don’t rely on them too much. Later in the game, you can unlock more covers for each of the maps, and their health to really help when the waves get abit too hectic. Regardless of the map, battle arenas vary in size, scope and elevation, but always remain square. I believe these are procedurally generated from a number of tiles, but regardless of the map you are working through, each provide an enthralling experience.
The developers have also allowed you to zoom in and out of the arena ensuring you can pinpoint the location you wish to move the mechs too, or just watch the destruction of your enemies close up. I would have preferred abit more of a bigger zoom in, so I can could use the slow down feature and watch troops being mowed down by one of my gun toting mechs, lets hope the developers can add this in a later patch! The games overall UI is great with its simplistic crisp palette, that stays to the edges of the screen, but provides enough information for you the player to acknowledge who and where you are being attacked from.
Destruction and lighting effects are clean and crisp even in the more hectic of battles, and can give the battlefield experience regardless of its small scale.
Sound
When it comes to music in this game, it’s all about the battlefield effects with an orchestral tune laid over. Choir like vocals mixed with piano scores are the bulk of the music, with sounds bites for different buildings within the HQ. I don’t think there is much variety as I could have sworn it’s the same soundtrack or at least similar for every battle, except the bosses.
The mechs and their weaponry take centre stage in the sound department, with ballistic weapons sounding chunky and explosive ammo sounding deep and abusive. In the middle of battles, I’m not exactly focusing on the score but it would be nice to vary the tracks a little more.
There is limited voice work here in the form of the pilots who will often comment when they have killed something, taking damage or moving. When it comes to the storytelling, this is relayed with static text and visual images. I think it would have been great to get voicework for the story as a whole, but being a small team, this may have caused budget issues when they were developing, so I’m not going to be too harsh.
My recommendation here would be a good quality soundbar to enjoy the big booms of your mechs gun as they tear down your enemies.
Verdict
This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Grit and Valor: 1949 is a ‘’Must Own’’.
A superb game that really does it job well, and engages you in all areas. Every run gives you a plethora of options to upgrade, that ensure no matter the outcome, you will always be progressing to the inevitable battle in the heart of Germany.
The game is currently priced on Xbox at £16.74 or approx. $20 and depending on skill and patience would give you about 10hours to complete the story. However you can double that, in a bid to unlock everything in the game, with also a good amount of replay ability in crafting different mech stats.
A really fun and engaging real time tactic team mech based game that pushes the boundaries where needed. This game would suit even the most casual of players, but can give enough of a challenge for the more experienced players. The perfect all rounder that should be in everyone’s collection.