Custom Mech Wars looks like a budget Armored Core that lets you build a drill penis robot, and I can’t wait to play it

People are already having fun with Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon’s mech editor, creating robots that look like everything from Grand Theft Auto’s CJ to horrific corporate marketing armed with twin gatling guns. For as amazing as AC6’s mech maker is, though, there’s one thing it can’t create: a tank strutting around on bare legs and heels. Lucky for us, then, that Custom Mech Wars is on the way.

Custom Mech Wars comes from D3 Publisher, the folks behind delightfully trashy bug-blasting Z-game Earth Defense Force, and seems to share that long-running series’ love of combining absurd spectacle with deliberately (at least, I think it’s deliberate) scrappy production values.

Here’s the pitch: some sort of AI has gone rampant and taken control of a bunch of security robots, wrecking shop in cities around the world. It’s up to you, as pilots of even cooler robots, to blow them up and save the Earth.

That’s all well and good, but it’s the ‘Custom’ bit of Custom Mech Wars’ name that really stands out in its first trailer showing. The game offers a mech creator tool that appears to let you do pretty much anything you want, whether it’s recreating mecha from shows like Gundam, the Wild Force Megazord of Power Rangers or just covering your robot in big guns.

It goes beyond just making cool-looking robots, too, with the trailer showing off creations such as the Barelegged Tank, the Burger Bot (introduced with the hilarious title “sovereignty of lunch meats”), the Commuter Bot (“This is a Japanese train”) and the three-headed Bunny Wunny Bot.

There are surprisingly raunchy robots in there too, including the “love fusion” of the Couple Bot and the Drill**** Bot, which appears to have a laser cone for a dick.

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Apparently the creator will offer the freedom to stick as many limbs, heads and attachments as you like on your frame, altering the angle and position of hundreds of different parts as you please for customisation said to be “extreme, like really”.

Those creations can then be shared online and taken into missions either in single-player or via four-player online co-op, using your robot’s unique arrangement of weapons and, well, everything to take down enemy mechs and blow up the world’s destructible buildings. Once you’ve blown everything up, you’ll be able to use the parts you collect from defeated robots to further customise your mech, naturally.

The whole thing looks and sounds extremely silly, but that kind of silly that knows exactly what it’s going for. We’ll be able to get a proper look – and see what sort of nightmarish creations players come up with – when Custom Mech Wars hits Steam this winter.