Heavy Gear Assault
Heavy Gear Assault is a mech combat shooter built around fast arena-style PvP and a solo campaign, letting players assemble, tune, and upgrade multiple Gear loadouts for different battlefield roles.
|
Publisher: Stompy Bot Productions Playerbase: Shut Down Type: Shooter Release Date: December 29, 2016 Pros: +Deep mech building and upgrades. +Both solo and PvP modes. +Battlefields with varied terrain and sightlines. Cons: -Public details and support are scarce. |
Heavy Gear Assault Overview
Set in the Heavy Gear universe on Terra Nova, Heavy Gear Assault (HGA) casts you as a pilot caught in the middle of corporate conflict, where skilled mercenaries and factions treat Gear squads as expendable assets. Even if you are not familiar with the wider franchise, the premise is easy to grasp: pick a machine suited to your role, build it toward your preferred style, then take it into matches that emphasize positioning, target selection, and team play.
The game’s mechs, referred to as Gears, are divided into categories such as Recon, Brawler, Sniper, and Electronics, which helps frame what each chassis is meant to do in a fight. From there, the main hook is customization. You can push a build toward mobility, durability, or damage output, and tweak practical factors like speed, weight, and overall combat performance to better fit your approach. On the content side, HGA supports both real-time PvP arena play (including ranked matches) and a single-player campaign, with maps that move between distinct environments such as arid deserts and frozen mountain regions.
Heavy Gear Assault Key Features:
- Heavy Gear Franchise – A return to video games for the Heavy Gear name after a long gap of nearly two decades.
- Pick a Gear – Choose from multiple Gear roles, including Recon and Sniper variants.
- Enhance and Customize – Shape your machine through upgrades and build choices that match how you like to fight.
- Various Landscapes – Battle across maps with different climates, terrain types, and engagement ranges.
- PvP and Solo Campaign – Queue for PvP arena matches or work through the single-player campaign.
Heavy Gear Assault Screenshots
Heavy Gear Assault Featured Video
Heavy Gear Assault Review
Heavy Gear Assault aims for a specific niche, a skill-based mech shooter that mixes arena pacing with loadout planning. On paper, the formula is appealing. You select a Gear type that signals its job, then you iterate on your build until it feels right, trading raw power against mobility and survivability. That kind of tuning is where mech games can shine, and HGA’s emphasis on adjusting attributes like speed and weight gives the impression of piloting something with constraints rather than a generic shooter avatar.
Match flow, when it works, leans on classic mech combat fundamentals: using terrain to manage sightlines, choosing when to peek or commit, and coordinating focus fire. The presence of distinct Gear roles (Recon, Brawler, Sniper, Electronics) also suggests a team composition layer, where players can specialize and cover weaknesses, rather than everyone running the same all-purpose setup. Likewise, varied maps, ranging from open desert spaces to more punishing icy regions, help create different engagement distances and decision-making pressures.
The major problem is not the concept, it is the reality of the product’s availability and support. Heavy Gear Assault is listed as shut down, and its later development state left many players with an experience that is difficult or impossible to access as originally intended. For a game that depends heavily on live matchmaking and active servers, that limitation overshadows the strongest parts of its design. As a result, HGA is best understood today as an interesting entry in the Heavy Gear lineage and a case study in promising mech shooter ideas that did not get the long-term runway they needed.
Heavy Gear Assault Links
Heavy Gear Assault Official Site
Heavy Gear Assault Facebook Page
Heavy Gear Assault Steam Page [Not Yet Available]
Heavy Gear Assault Steam Community Group
Heavy Gear Assault Kickstarter [No Longer Available]
Heavy Gear Assault Reddit
Heavy Gear Assault: MMO System Requirements
Recommended Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 7
CPU: Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or faster
RAM: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or higher
Official system requirements have not yet been released for Heavy Gear Assault. The requirements above our based on our experience and will be updated when official numbers become available.
Heavy Gear Assault Music & Soundtrack
Coming soon!
Heavy Gear Assault Additional Information
Developer(s): MekTek Studios
Publisher(s): Stompy Bot Productions & Dream Pod 9
Game Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s): PC
Kickstarter Start Date: May 20, 2013 [Cancelled in June 2013]
Paid Alpha: 2014 [First Round] // 2015 [Second Round]
Early Access: December 15, 2016
Abandoned: May 14, 2018
Development History / Background:
Heavy Gear Assault is a PC mech shooter from MekTek Studios with publishing handled by Stompy Bot Productions, with the wider Heavy Gear setting originating from Dream Pod 9. Built in Unreal Engine 4, the project first sought funding through a Kickstarter launched in May 2013, but the campaign was cancelled in June 2013 after it did not reach its funding targets. To keep development moving, paid alpha access was offered in two waves during 2014 and 2015. Heavy Gear Assault later arrived on Steam in Early Access on December 15, 2016. Development activity ceased as of May 14, 2018, and the servers are no longer running. Steam still lists the title at $39.99, and user feedback frequently points out that the game is not functional in its intended online form.