MACH-X
The roster has jets and helicopters, so Mach-X was never going to be a museum piece. But the weapons and bosses still sounded like a different game. Two releases fixed that: 1.4.0 on 25 October and 1.5.0 on 27 October.
1.4.0 removed the magic weapons. In their place came Flak Curtain, Cannon Pods, Artillery Barrage, Phosphorus Canister, Radio Drones, Heavy Bombers and Magnet Mines, each with its own sound. The Arcane class is now called Special, and the Grimoire item became the Boffin's Notebook. I added Rotor Wingman, an escort helicopter with five visible upgrades: rocket pods, a door gunner, incendiary spray, armour plates and a boosted engine.
The bosses were rebuilt as war machines. Bombers, flying wings, rotor gunships, siege and flak tanks, zeppelins, a U-boat, an oil rig and armoured trains. They are meant to have silhouettes you recognise before you read their name.
I also made a worlds-clear happen at wave 10 instead of 15. Runs had been long enough to lose people, and the Old Man, the secret boss, had to get tougher to match.
1.5.0 went through the details. Seventeen weapons were replaced by real arms: Hispano 20mm, Schräge Musik, Cookie Blockbuster, Hedgehog Mortar, Parafrag Bombs, .50 Cal Wing Guns and others. About forty-five item and combo names were rewritten in the same voice. The old secret worlds became normal maps tied to real theatres: Scapa Flow, Narvik Fjord, Kasserine Pass, Ruhr Firestorm, Ironbottom Sound and Normandy Bocage. Portals are gone.
The nuke got rebuilt. It clears the screen and leaves a glassy crater for the rest of the run. The title screen now opens on an atomic blast over a blacked-out city.
Searchlights became real carbon-arc beams. The tornado is a dust funnel full of debris. Outposts and flak pits were redrawn, and train tracks stopped crossing each other.
Behind all of that sat a performance pass. Menus got smoother, memory use went down, and the game picks an automatic quality level for your phone.
I am not claiming a history lesson. A jet and a Spitfire still share a sky. But the names, the sounds and the shapes now point the same way, and that makes the war feel like one place.
Next: supporter packs, and a crash that a tester found for me.