Skip to main content

Bounty Star takes Armored Core to the Wild West

A mech stands in a desert in Bounty Star.
Annapurna Interactive
Summer Gaming Marathon Feature Image
This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

More than any other subgenre in gaming, the mecha game has a very defined look. Titles like Armored Core and MechWarrior both tend to share a lot of aesthetic similarities, with rusty mechs battling in a hardened sci-fi world. The art style may change here and there, but the genre certainly has a uniform so to speak.

That’s about to change thanks to an unlikely indie. Bounty Star is an upcoming title from publisher Annapurna Interactive that’s unlike any mecha game I’ve ever seen. In fact, I didn’t realize it was one at all until I went hands-on with it at Summer Game Fest. While it may not wind up being the tightest or most complex mecha game, its unique Wild West tone gives the genre the aesthetic shake-up it needs.

Recommended Videos

In Bounty Star, players take on the role of Clem, a bounty hunter living out in the deserts of the American Southwest. She’s hidden away in a modest roadside scrapyard where she spends her day cooking meals out of the local cacti and tending to her giant mech. Before actually jumping into that robot, though, I get a small taste of Bounty Star‘s other side: its base management. My first missions simply have me gathering some materials and cooking a nice meal, which will grant my mech some buffs on its next trip out. I’m not sure how deep that piece of the game goes, but the full release promises farming, ammo crafting, and animal raising.

A robot shoots at another in Bounty Star.
Annapurna Interactive

The meat of the experience, though, is its third-person mecha action. After tending to my settlement, I head over to a board in my base and pick up a bounty. I hop into the cockpit of my machine and customize all my weapons and gear to build a loadout for the mission. After that, I’m dropped into a bite-sized mission where I need to track down a target on a small map out in the desert. It structurally brings me back to Armored Core, with its small objectives that can be completed in a few minutes.

A few handy tutorials teach me the basics of battle. I can aim and fire my gun at enemies, slash them with my melee weapon, or spray out a spinning hail of bullets by pressing fire in the middle of my melee attack string. Those actions will heat up my robot, though, and there’s a consequence for that. If my machine overheats, it’ll temporarily become immobilized and leave it open to attacks from foes.

It’s hard to get a sense of just how deep Bounty Star‘s mecha action really is from the short snippet I played. Battles seemed a bit simplistic, as I had limited tools I could use. I was either shooting or performing the same slash combo depending on my enemies’ resistances to those two damage types. I’m hoping that it’s just a matter of an early game build and that later gear will make a bigger difference to playstyle.

Even if combat does land on the shallow side, I’m happy to see a mecha game with such a unique tone. Bounty Star goes full-on Western, replacing cowboys and robbers with giant robots. That makes way for some more human storytelling built around Clem, a tortured war veteran, as opposed to the headier hard sci-fi of something like Armored Core. The genre could stand to think outside the cockpit a bit more as Bounty Star is doing here.

Bounty Star will launch in 2024 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It’ll release on Xbox Game Pass as well.

Giovanni Colantonio
As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…
Atomfall finds a middle ground between S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout
atomfall hands on preview gamescom xbox

I knew little about Atomfall before playing a demo of it at a recent Xbox event in Los Angeles. I saw its trailer during June's Xbox Games Showcase and assumed it was just a British take on S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which is getting a sequel this year. Although Atomfall certainly has that same survival edge and nuclear catastrophe setting, it also has RPG elements reminiscent of games like Fallout: New Vegas -- especially when it comes to its dialogue system. Atomfall is a bold swing for a game developer best known for the Sniper Elite series, and I was left wanting more after my brief hands-on time with it.

Atomfall - Gamescom Trailer | Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, PS5 & PS4

Read more
Heroes of Might and Magic to get first new game in about a decade
A screen that says Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden era in front of two armies going up against each other.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era – Official Reveal Trailer

Ubisoft announced Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era at Gamescom 2024 on Thursday, and it will indeed bring things back to an "olden era" when it hits early access in the first half of 2025 on Steam.

Read more
Bonaparte takes Crusader Kings and Fire Emblem to the French Revolution
Key art for Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution.

There’s a grand strategy game for almost every important era of military history. Developers like Paradox Interactive and Creative Assembly have made sure of that. One very important, but less explored historical era is the French Revolution, which has just one Total War game from 14 years ago to its name. Now, a new game developer called Studio Imugi wants to make its mark with Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution, an alternate history strategy game set in a steampunk version of that time period. It mixes gameplay elements from Crusader Kings and Fire Emblem and looks like an approachable entry point to one of gaming's most intimidating genres.

Although Bonaparte gets its name from Napoleon, that historical figure actually isn’t in the game. Instead, players can choose to be “Cesar Bonaparte” or “Celine Bonaparte” and go on to play a similar role in rising from a soldier to a defining figure of the French Revolution over the decade it takes place. Although consulting historical figures such as Jacques Hebert and Marquis De Lafayette is a bit part of the game, that should be your first indication that this is an alt-history game. Your second should be that it embraces steampunk aesthetics, as players can control giant steam-powered mechs in battle.

Read more