MENACE

Pete Dero · January 29, 2026, 10:47:52 AM

undercovergeek · January 29, 2026, 12:24:57 PM

Quote from: Pete Dero on January 29, 2026, 10:47:52 AM

Yeah today will be the day the damn bursts I guess - run to your favourite streamer!!

Jarhead0331 · January 29, 2026, 08:02:54 PM

Alright...so, I have some very strong opinions about this game so far that I will summarize generally as Menace is a game with extremely high potential to be one of the greats. The game is built around an interesting new hard sci-fi universe with charming graphics, a generally good audio experience and some really nice tactical action with a, what I will describe in its present form, light strategic layer to play with between missions...but, it has a couple issues and needs some more development.

The story elements in the game are not fully fleshed out yet, but what can be gathered is that humans have expanded beyond earth to the stars. At least one area of colonized space is known informally as the "Wayback" and it seems to be described as something akin to the Wild West. There are presently three or four factions, some of which are run by corporate white collar criminals, while others are managed by advanced Asian techno-states or West-African style warlords. The Core Worlds is where the civilized folks live and the player is part of the Core World Marine Corps. I gather that trnasit is conducted through jump gates of some kind and apparently, while jumping to the Wayback in your Marine cruiser, there was some calamity that caused extensive damage to your vessel and wiped out essentially your entire command. You are a major and are now in charge of the operation.

Game play revolves around selecting mission requests from the various factions in the Wayback which are spread across 5 or six different worlds. So far, I've seen a temperate planet, a desert planet and an arctic one. Mission requests involve a number of scenarios, typically three, and some of which branch out. Succeeding in each mission results in obtaining some benefit, which could range from repair facilities for your machines, extra intel, or some new gear or weaponry.

Additionally, you gain trust points with the faction you work for, while possibly alienating the others. As you gain trust, the factions will offer to give you some benefits which seem to be new components for your ship. There has not been a tremendous amount of variability in missions so far. They are mostly either take control of some location and hold it for a set period of turns, or defend a location or, destroy some facility, kill some VIP, or wipe out, rescue or defend a certain percentage of friendly, civilian or enemy units depending on the situation.

Before starting a new game, you have to pick 4 squad leaders from a list of about 8 or so. They are all stereotypical characters of one kind or another, and only one or two of them strike me as having the appropriate military or marine-like bearing. Honestly, I wish they were more generic. Regardless, they each have stats, perks and specialties. Some are pilots, others are light infantry, etc. Each squad then has a number of squadies, and the player can remove or add squadies, up to a max of 8. This is a strategic decision because squadies are a finite resources. You can recruit more, but these opportunities are limited. As squad leaders participate in missions, you gain promotion points which you can use to acquire new perks. These provide either extra initiative, extra action points for movement, better range or sighting, etc.

Strategically, in addition to hiring squad leaders and building out your squads, the player can earn supply points to repair damaged components to your cruiser, ie. medbay, vehicle repair hanger, sensors, orbital weapons, etc. There is also a black market where you can trade equipment recovered from the battlefield with better or more advanced gear, weapons, and vehicles. This is where one of my chief complaints with the game arises. The cost of new gear relative to the value of recovered gear is very high. It takes several missions to save up enough salvageable gear to be able to trade for something worthwhile. Also, you don't really get a lot of salvage each mission and a lot of gear that you should theoretically be able to recover, for some reason is not.

This problem is compounded by the fact that you start the game with virtually nothing. I mean seriously, your squadies don't even have basic armor. Their standard weapon is a weak semi-automatic carbine, and nobody has any heavy weapons or secondary gear. This really annoys me. You're supposed to be a heavily armed, elite expeditionary force and I don't think the incident with the jump that damaged the ship really explains why your force has literally no weapons or good tech. This really makes the game much more challenging and it is not always to good effect.

Nevertheless, tactical combat is still very fun. There are reasonable rules related to cover, concealment and line of sight, although for some reason, you can fire through your own squads without causing friendly fire, disruption or any other negative outcome.

Terrain and structures are destructible and combat can be very deadly. Troops can be suppressed, pinned down or demoralized causing them to waiver, break and flee. Some of the missions can only be accomplished by using fire to pin and suppress while moving in to destroy or rescue a target and then move out quickly under cover. In other words, eliminating the enemy units is not always necessary and is often not even strategically practical. It is sometimes enough to just fix them in place, while your units go on to achieve a limited specific objective. There are weather and lighting conditions that effect combat and sighting in a number of different ways. Fog, rain and snow are modeled and there are both day and night missions.

I believe there are three or four different enemy types in the game. I've fought scavenger pirates, rogue army units and some kind of insect-like alien life form. None of these are the "Menace" from which the game derives its title. This is a species or kind of enemy that I have not come up against yet, but I think it is either some kind of vicious alien or cybernetic type race. The tactics do seem to vary by enemy type and weapons used, but I have not been overly impressed by the AI. there is some basic use of cover and suppressive fire, but most enemies ultimately seem to rely on numbers and wave style attacks. I will say that the rogue army units had an impressive array of weaponry and vehicles and they did use it to effect.

The maps, troops and vehicles are all attractive, but I do wish the maps had a little more "life" to them. The sounds are really good, particularly the weapons. Heavy cannons, RPGs, mortar, etc. have a crap load of "punch"and because you grow attached to your men, sometimes when taking heavy fire, I wince. It will hurt when you lose squadies, again, because there is a limit to how many you have.

One other thing that really adds unnecessary difficulty is that your squad leaders can become tired and then exhausted if they participate in too many consecutive missions. They can also be injured or killed. If tired, exhausted or injured they suffer increasingly severe penalties in combat and need to rest for a specified number of missions. I've found this practically game breaking with only 4 squads. On each mission, you are typically very outnumbered. Going into battle down a squad or two in order to let some rest is prohibitive making missions at times unreasonably and frustratingly difficult. In fact, my last run I had to stop because all 4 of my squad leaders were exhausted and one was also injured. This happened at time when they were quite leveled up and I had worked very hard to acquire some really decent gear and weapons. So, in essence, it was game ending and I needed to start over.

I really hope these systems are fleshed out during early access. If the strategic layer systems are filled in with more options, if there is just a bit more balancing out and if there is more variety added to the tactical missions, Menace will prove to be a really fantastic game. Technically, it has been flawless. No obvious bugs, CTDs, or slow downs. It runs great on my middling system running a 3080 GPU.

Overall, I'm definitely hooked on the gameplay loop, but the artificial challenge of starting the game with really no gear and having only 4 squads is a downer that will limit my desire to keep playing eventually. Still, if you like tactical turned-based sci-fi combat with some strategic/campaign flavor, this one is an easy buy.

undercovergeek · January 30, 2026, 04:14:25 AM

Great stuff - thank you - I'll be there on the 6th

glen55 · January 30, 2026, 04:09:04 PM

QuoteThis problem is compounded by the fact that you start the game with virtually nothing. I mean seriously, your squadies don't even have basic armor. Their standard weapon is a weak semi-automatic carbine, and nobody has any heavy weapons or secondary gear. This really annoys me. You're supposed to be a heavily armed, elite expeditionary force and I don't think the incident with the jump that damaged the ship really explains why your force has literally no weapons or good tech. This really makes the game much more challenging and it is not always to good effect.

What if maybe they just provided a reasonable explanation. I'm not going to say what it might be off the top of my head, but some bad thing happened that destroyed a lot of the gear, etc. Because the upside is that this aligns with standard (or should I say hallowed?) RPG stuff. You start out with nothing and build up into a super-soldier.

I often enjoy the early levels best in RPGs because that's when you're really noticeably getting better. I don't know if they have this model in mind or not, but if they do I've played a lot of games where I enjoyed the "build up from nothing" a lot so I would say it ain't necessarily bad.

Battle Brothers was kind of that way, although of course Battle Brothers wasn't supposed to be "a heavily armed, elite expeditionary force." But I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to bringing that template into a game like this in a reasonable, measured fashion.

The difficulty unreasonably ramping up is a different story, though. That I'm not into.

Jarhead0331 · February 01, 2026, 09:17:54 PM

One of my main frustrations was the mechanic where your squad leaders can get weary and then exhausted, essentially making them worthless in missions. The problem was you only select 4 squad leaders and so you don't have any options to rotate tired leaders out of the OOB to rest. Well, I discovered that you can spend salvage points in the black market to gain intel on local mercs you can hire as squad leaders. You can then spend authority points to recruit them. They are even more "eccentric" than your marine leaders, but they're better than nothing. I recruited 2 infantry leaders and a pilot and this let me give the tired guys some R&R.

Still really enjoying the game with over 15 hours in.

undercovergeek · February 02, 2026, 07:34:40 AM

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 01, 2026, 09:17:54 PMOne of my main frustrations was the mechanic where your squad leaders can get weary and then exhausted, essentially making them worthless in missions. The problem was you only select 4 squad leaders and so you don't have any options to rotate tired leaders out of the OOB to rest. Well, I discovered that you can spend salvage points in the black market to gain intel on local mercs you can hire as squad leaders. You can then spend authority points to recruit them. They are even more "eccentric" than your marine leaders, but they're better than nothing. I recruited 2 infantry leaders and a pilot and this let me give the tired guys some R&R.

Still really enjoying the game with over 15 hours in.

My wallet is vibrating

Jarhead0331 · February 06, 2026, 06:10:30 AM

Well!? What do you guys think?

Destraex · February 06, 2026, 06:20:11 AM

Nice write up Jar.

Pete Dero · February 06, 2026, 09:55:02 AM

Good video explaining the game features (like getting more squad leaders through the black market).

I don't have it (yet) but videos like this weaken my resistance.

kludger · February 08, 2026, 11:15:53 AM

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 06, 2026, 06:10:30 AMWell!? What do you guys think?

Thanks for your good write up, eased my worries about how much game was in the early access, and your tip on the blackmarket hires really helps.

I'm glad they took a chance doing things differently than XCom, the lack of overwatch really changes and speeds up the playstyle in a new good way.

Already enjoying it and looking forward to see how it matures.

Jarhead0331 · February 08, 2026, 11:54:20 AM

Glad you're enjoying it. I'm totally hooked and can't take myself away from it, even though I want to play other things too. I've got over 24 hours in and still going very strong!

Silent Disapproval Robot · February 15, 2026, 01:41:28 PM

Have the roboty things been implemented yet? I've completed 10 ops in my campaign and I've seen pirates, bugs, and a rebel army as enemies so far, but not the roboty things from the opening video.

W8taminute · February 15, 2026, 07:00:22 PM

JH your post number 17 qualifies as a potential candidate for a front page grog review.

Jarhead0331 · February 15, 2026, 09:42:30 PM

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on February 15, 2026, 01:41:28 PMHave the roboty things been implemented yet? I've completed 10 ops in my campaign and I've seen pirates, bugs, and a rebel army as enemies so far, but not the roboty things from the opening video.

Yes. They're in there, but the story so far is incomplete. You'll get to fight them. Keep playing.