Gamespot’s “Cheaper by the Dozen” segments feature free, no-fee games and their latest instalment covered action games.   One of those games is Exteel (NCSoft), a fast and furious third person mecha shooter, and I’m wondering why I hadn’t tried it when I heard about it a few years ago.  It’s a blast!

Mechanaught

Exteel is pure combat so there’s no story, no character development save for stat leveling.   Players pilot mechanaughts (anime-style giant robots) and participating in combat earns players credits which they can use to buy mechanaught upgrades, upgrade pilot abilities (marksmanship, energy management etc) and skills for special combo moves.

The game types have the standard assortment: Capture the flag, Death Match and Team Death Match, and Last Stand (players defend against NPC attackers).

More Than A Twitch Shooter

It takes more than reflexes and marksmanship to be successful in Exteel combat.   A key to survival is good energy management and terrain usage.   Energy is used to not only jet around the battlefield but to switch out weapons that have overheated.

If you’re careless about how you move and don’t use the surrounding terrain to your full advantage, you can find yourself out of energy in moments.  You’ll be unable to use your thrusters to avoid attacks, switch weapons and death will come swiftly.

Money Is Hard Won

While Exteel is free to download and play, NCSoft adopted a micro-payment system and has designed Exteel with incentives for players to purchase “NC Coins”, NCSoft’s online currency.

As a new player, you can be easily outclassed in most of the games so the temptation to buy relatively inexpensive NC Coin is quite strong.

Money is hard won.  It takes many games to earn enough to buy some of the more decent gear.  The difficulty in earning money may entice some players to reduce the amount of level grinding and purchase NC Coins to purchase gear instead of the in-game Exteel currency.

Exteel has a built-in money sink where, unlike most games, Mechanaught upgrades and player skills are actually temporary.  Skills like special combo moves are “rented” for a period of 7 days or 30 days and the same goes with upgraded Mechanaught parts (except for the default gear which never expires).

There is also a built-in depreciation.  Gear wears out whether you’re online or not, so maintenance has to be done and that, of course, costs money.

Gear-heads/Tweakers Rejoice

Besides direct combat, part of the challenge in Exteel is choosing the right gear that not only suits your game play style, but also balances out the pros and cons of each part.

Some parts will improve certain stats in some areas but reduces them in others, so players have to put thought into their mechanaught designs to strike a balance between game play style and the pros and cons of each piece of gear.  Gearheads/tweakers will love this aspect of the game.

Exteel offers a wide selection of heads, cores, legs, arms, boosters as well as melee and short/medium/long range ballistic and energy weapons and NCSoft does up the inventory with new ones.

No Lack of Players, Quick Games and Easy System Requirements

Despite being three years old, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of players.  While the game list isn’t pages long, there’s enough people playing Exteel such that finding games isn’t a problem.

Exteel is also well suited to those who can’t dedicate a lot of time to gaming.  It’s very easy to join a game and play for only a few minutes.  The experience gained is sufficient to make even casual gamers feel like they’ve accomplished something, even with brief gaming sessions.

Exteel also doesn’t require the latest cutting edge video hardware to run, which is good news for a lot of players with older systems.  The visual design is appealing such that even in low resolutions, the game still looks quite decent.  I play it at 1024 x 768 even though I could play it at 1680 x 1050.

If you’re looking for a good lightweight mecha-based action game, Exteel certainly does the job.  I had been eyeing Armored Core 4: For Answer to scratch my mecha combat itch, but Exteel seems to scratching it for now— and it’s free.

Trailer: