You’ve arrived on an alien planet and are tasked with setting up a human colony. There’s a problem though, the locals aren’t too happy about it. The solution, jump in your Star Wars-like walker and take the fight to them. Will Leigh colonise the planet? Or will the Ewoks defeat him? Find out in his BE-A Walker Switch Review.

To note, a review code was provided for review by the game’s publishers.

How to BE-A Walker

Upon starting BE-A Walker (BW) you are immediately told how to operate your walking mech with a brief tutorial. You move forward by moving the left analog stick and press ZL to move each leg of the walker independently. It’s such a simple idea but it works surprising well. If you’re feeling lazy you can click in the left analogue stick and that will start ‘Auto-Mode’. Activating ‘Auto-Mode’ means the walker will move normally, without having to tap ZL.

These two modes of walking will be used throughout your adventure. Sometimes you will be required to move more precisely, so it is best if you switch to the manual control option. On the other hand, when engaged in battles or transporting cargo, you should switch to the auto walk feature so you can focus on targeting enemies. Talking about targeting, you can move your weapon sights up and down with the right analog stick and fire with ZR.

In addition, there’s also an extra mode allowing you to swap between three phases, giving you more control over your walker’s power consumption. When you press the Y button this allows you to activate a Neutral Mode, providing a balanced ratio of oxygen consumption, walking speed and reload time. The Second phase is Turbo Mode, which increases walking speed, decreases reload time and costs more oxygen. Finally, your third phase is Economy Mode, which makes your walker move slowly but it increases weapon reload time and reduces the consumption of oxygen. The three modes are interesting and offer a rock, paper scissors like puzzle element to the game for different situations.

Armour and Oxygen

The two main life-lines of BW is your armour and oxygen levels. Armour can only be depleted by enemy fire, whereas your oxygen level depletes as soon as leave confines of your base. The planet’s atmosphere is toxic, so if you run out of oxygen you’re out of luck. There are droids that will fly you in new air filters for your walker and they’ll even repair it for you if it’s damaged. However, it takes a while to unlock them, so keep an eye on your Oxygen!

Upgrades and Missions

Early missions can be quite tough when you’re first starting out. Missions are given to you in sets of threes, and you’re rewarded with cash even if you fail them. It’s like the devs knew the early game was difficult but give you enough of an incentive to keep playing as you can use the money to upgrade your walker.

Missions objectives can range from search, destroy and rescuing a survivor. There’s also even indoor missions where you have to deliver cargo and avoid stepping on any humans.

Upgrades are paramount to your success. You can upgrade your armour, air filters, energy capacity and cooling systems. These act almost like stats and are what you’ll spend most of your time working on. However, there are other upgrades like new weaponry and weaponry slots that become available as you complete missions. Visualy you can equip different designs for your walker. They’re a nice little extra but sadly there is no other customisation available, which I think is a missed opportunity.

Fitting in with the Natives

One thing I really enjoyed in BW was enemy encounters. Walking through a forest and seeing the shadowy silhouettes of the natives as they call-to-arms in the foreground is exhilarating. Watching them fearlessly charge towards you firing their bows and arrows, and later, advanced weaponry is fun to repel.

Weapons are on a cool-down timer, so using them up too quickly may be your own downfall. However, your walker is massive and you can actually stand on enemies, leaving pools of blood that sticks to your feet. It’s really cool and quite gory. The amount of blood showered across the screen surprised me and it was satisfying too!

Choices – Pick your side!

There comes a point where you have to make a choice- either fight for the locals or destroy them. I chose to help the natives on my first play through and then destroyed them on my second. It’s a nice way to provide a meaningful impact on the story. However, after I completed the campaign I felt like the ending was far from a happy one, making me wonder if my choice was the right one. I was disappointed to find on my second play through the ending was as bleak, making me feel like it didn’t really matter what decision I made. The ending was always the same.

Graphics and Sound

I like the details in this game’s art style. For example, the rain hitting off your walker or blood being dragged along on your feet. Even though some of the backgrounds do become a little repetitive, the foreground details and silhouettes of natives was pretty neat and brought the game to life.

Animations of your enemies and walker look great in motion too. The walker’s steps sounds really punchy, with the size and weight of the machine emphasised by the HD rumble. Furthermore, there is voice acting in the game that I really appreciated and thought was very well done.

Issues

My biggest issue with BW is that both endings are too sudden and completely left me scratching my head. Everything I’ve played in BW I’ve enjoyed, but I expected the ending to clear up what happen to natives or the colony. However, both endings happen so suddenly and with no context on what happen to anyone. It literally come up with“The End” and left me feeling disappointed.

BE-A Walker Switch Review

If you haven’t already guessed, I really liked BE-A Walker so much so that I played through it twice. Shooting is satisfying and the walking simulation goes from relaxing to stressful pretty quickly when fighting when the natives.

The game reminds me of a mix of Avatar and the fight on Endor in Star Wars Episode VI. There are plenty of upgrades and missions to keep you entertained and a few unlockables that keep the game interesting. The story gives you a decision to make, changing up some of the dialogue depending on what you choose. Sadly though, that’s about all that changes, as after two play throughs the endings were equally bleak and sudden. Even though the endings left me wanting more, this is still a great game that you should add to your Switch library. It’s a unique take on the walking simulation genre.

Therefore, I give BE-A Walker by SONKA my rating of

Do you feel like piloting a walker around Endor? What did you think of Leigh’s BE-A Walker Switch review? Let us know over on Twitter or come and say hello on the SIF Discord.

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BE-A Walker Switch Review

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