Screenshot: Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
With a
Power Rangers movie still in recent memory, and the rumors of yet another reboot in the works for the long-running children’s show, you could say there is a bit of a reemergence of the once popular franchise. Based on the popular (and even longer running) Japanese
Super Sentai series,
Power Rangers has trained “teens with attitude” to fight against a myriad of threats across space and time.
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is an ambitious fighting game that manages to provide some pretty fun fighting in a package that has overall mixed results.
You can check out our full review for Battle for the Grid here. Out today on PC,
Battle for the Grid brings its Morpin’ action to a whole new audience, and we checked out how the PC version of
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid compares to its console counterpart.
Screenshot: Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
First off, for those unfamiliar,
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a homage to the decades of
Power Rangers, with characters appearing from multiple TV shows, and even the latest movie that just released. It’s a very “biggest crossover” feel, but with a budget presentation.
Lord Drakkon—the evil version of Tommy Oliver (the original Green/White Ranger) is trying to steal morphers across the “grid” so he can amplify his own evil power. The story also feels like it takes heavy cues from Netherrealm’s latest
Mortal Kombat games, and more notably, the
Injustice series, for how the story plays out—and even how it’s presented, with fighting usually happening after some relevant cutscene.
The fighting, however, feels like it draws inspiration from a number of sources—like
Street Fighter, and the Capcom
Versus series, where you can swap between multiple fighters in a battle, and have them jump in to help in crucial moments. While the campaign mode has you fight as a solo fighter quite often, the Arcade and Versus modes have you choose a team of three fighters, with these fighters acting as back up, support, etc.
In addition to the Campaign mode, there is an Arcade mode where you fight through an increasingly difficult series of opponents until you face Lord Drakkon himself. There is also local multiplayer, as well as ranked and casual online versus--all pretty standard stuff.
Screenshot: Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
Power Rangers usually means giant, stompy robots called “Megazords” (or Zords for short). Unfortunately, and I feel like this is
Battle for the Grid’s biggest missed opportunity, you can’t use the Zords directly for combat. Instead, much like your tag-team allies, you can call in support help from your chosen Megazord, and it will rain destruction in the form of large area of effect attacks that are hard to avoid. Your Zord can change the tide of battle—sadly, you just can’t battle with them directly.
With only nine fighters at launch,
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid has seen some additions to beef up the roster to fifteen total fighters—some of which are paid DLC. That isn’t to say
Battle for the Grid isn’t getting any free updates, with new arenas, Zords, and other features added regularly since launch. And it doesn’t look like the support is ending anytime soon. In fact, the season two DLC releases today, and that adds three new characters, Anubis Cruger, Eric Myers, and Dai Shi along with the Delta Squad Megazord, and a new arena to fight in. If you’re coming in fresh with the PC launch, you couldn’t be coming in at a better time.
Screenshot: Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
Unfortunately, the transition from console to PC wasn’t the smoothest. I ran into a few graphical glitches (which were different from the glitches I experienced in the console version) but it was nothing game breaking. Just flickering, strange artifacts, etc. My biggest gripe is
Battle for the Grid’s handling of controllers. You can play
Battle for the Grid with your keyboard just fine (if you’re into that sort of thing) but there is no mouse support whatsoever. That’s fine for the actual fighting part, but a strange choice in regards to navigating the in-game menus. Also, if you connect a controller after the game is already running, the UI does not change to controller buttons—this is a feature that seems to be commonplace in most modern games, and is notably absent in
Battle for the Grid.
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid isn’t perfect. It suffers in multiple categories: presentation, graphics, and even a few graphical glitches. But
Battle for the Grid has heart, and
Power Rangers action—which is a surprisingly amusing combination.
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is out today on PC and is already available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch
Season 2 DLC is available today on PC and Xbox One, PlayStation 4 tomorrow, and Nintendo Switch on the 27th. Check out the trailer below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6i8sT9IN5I&feature=youtu.be
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