At best, the campaign mode is a guided way to learn the game's range of unique mechs before digging into multiplayer, but if you're only here for the campaign then you'll probably be disappointed at its poorly executed story and characters, and the significant pacing issues that come along with them. While the game's campaign elements don't deliver, Vox Machinae creates a totally unique and immersive mech experience that really makes you feel like you're controlling a giant robot.

Vox Machinae coming to Meta Quest 2 is a huge achievement for Space Bullet, it’s great to see this title finally hit the standalone headset and reach a wider audience. Sitting inside those mechs is a joy and never gets old when you’ve got a few buddies watching your back, stomping around the battlefield unleashing lasers and rocket barrages. It isn’t all plain sailing though, glitches were noticeable throughout and that 10-hour campaign makes for heavy, painful going. If you love giant robots fighting and always wanted to partake then Vox Machinae provides a grand (multiplayer) mech experience.

Vox Machinae’s single-player campaign is an appreciated if flawed addition to an already-fun multiplayer mech combat title. Plodding pacing and padded story elements slow your progress to a crawl, but it still retains the game’s deliberate and considered combat, which successfully blends a purposeful amount of rustic clumsiness and lumbering heft. Even if you don’t care for the single-player’s offerings, the frantic class-based multiplayer proved it was worth the price of entry years ago — though we’re still to deliver our final verdict there — and, though there are other mech combat games available, few capture the sense of scale and power on display here. Like its own monolithic war machines, Vox Machinae is a scrappy underdog, but one that’s very much worth rooting for.