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by Microsoft
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With
MechAssault making
its fast paced, simplified way onto the Xbox, its easy to forget
sometimes that its only a rather small representation of an entire
universe backed by a well established legion of fans. The Battletech
universe is as complex as it is vast, spawning numerous PC titles, board
games, and novels. Its true that MechAssault provides some action
packed moments and some solid combat with big machines, but for the pure
blood among us, for those who desire to control the true power of a
massive 100-ton war machine, there is nothing that can compare to the
old-fashioned detailed campaign of the MechWarrior series on the PC.
MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries, the latest release, serves up the same old
feel, and a level of detail the old console jockeys couldnt match with
an eleven button controller if they tried. A combination of hot blooded
combat and cold resource management, MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries is the
latest in an aging series that still has quite a kick when given a
chance. With somewhat lackluster graphics, and fundamental gameplay
thats been found in the MechWarrior games for some time, MechWarrior 4:
Mercenaries feels a bit like a retired master coming back for another
fight, as opposed to a fresh game with fresh blood for the kill. Worth a
look if you loved the games of the past, Mercenaries doesnt offer much
new, aside from a few improved weapons and a number of cut scenes, but
it still has something to show to a gamer with an eye for big toys.
For
those of you who are unfamiliar with the games of the past, MechWarrior
places you in command of various sized Mechs, war machines capable of
leveling entire cities single-handedly. In the future, almost all combat
is fought with squads of these machines, and theres good money out
there for a pilot willing to work for whoever pays the most. As one such
pilot, you start the game at the helm of your own starter mercenary
team, just on the street, and ready to frame your first dollar of
business and hang it behind the counter. The first thing to do is choose
an affiliation with a clan. Which clan you choose influences which
weapons you can purchase, and how early into the game you can buy them.
As you earn your way up in the ranks, youll find yourself at the helm
of some truly devastating gas-guzzlers that pack quite a punch.
The
gameplay itself is quite polished; years of experience building past
games have made MechWarrior relatively well refined. Youll find
yourself against larger numbers of units this game through, fighting
helicopters and tanks, as well as other mechs, to your hearts content.
While in the middle of combat, youll be kept up-to-date by your
teammates, specifically a crewmember who helps brief you before and
during combat. The radios crackle with perfect static; the missiles
leave your shoulders with beautifully rendered timing, and they arc in
just the right way on long distance shots. These elements combine to
make the physical combat of the game its heart an enjoyable and
addicting experience. However, there is more to the campaign mode than
simply blowing things up. You also have to decide such basic things as
what youre going to blow up, and exactly how youre going to do it. To
that end, before any combat is to be had, youll find yourself going
through a series of control screens equipping your mech, buying new
weapons, and making decisions as to what contracts your team is going to
take on. By allowing you to select from various missions, the storyline
is somewhat branching, allowing for a variety of final outcomes. There
are numerous planets in the universe which you can ship your team to for
a price and a little bit of time. New planets contain new mission and
become available as you go through the game, keeping you from getting
killed through your own overconfidence when you take on missions too big
for your skills as a mech warrior. One planet is of special interest,
Solaris VII, the universes equivalent of Rome (or maybe Las
Vegas), where the baddest mech pilots battle it out in a form of big-bot
Olympics.
The
Solaris circuits there are several divisions depending on the size and
weight of your mech are a unique aspect of the game that are quite
capable of distracting you from your real job of being a mercenary for
quite some time. After signing up, youre dropped into an arena (there
are several) with a number of other mechs, and left to battle it out
until only one is left standing. Thats right, no room for misjudging or
vote swapping; as long as there are still two mechs with the ability to
ram their enemy into submission (assuming youve lost all your weapons),
the battle is not over. The entire match is commentated on by an
announcer, and even though the list of various comments is quite limited
if you play an instant action combat mission in one of the arenas,
hell start repeating himself in short order -- the overall effect is
quite engaging.
Unfortunately,
not everything in Mercenaries is top of the line. The graphics engine is
basically the same used in the original Mechwarrior 4 released three
years ago in 2000. While the overall atmosphere is compelling, the world
itself is looking old and somewhat flat. The ground lacks details, and
items are often defined by a blocky or polygon look (for the best
example of this, take a look at your mechs own shadow). On the same
token, the landscape itself comes across as almost too smooth, without
texture. The trees, while destructible, tend to simply vanish quickly
into dust when shot at or walked through, as opposed to tipping over or
falling down like one would expect. Other details also sometimes seem to
lack that special touch. For example, the opening motion videos often
come across as grainy and pixilated by modern standards. With the
quality of modern video codecs, the encoding quality of the video looks
straight out of a game from several years ago. In-game touches are
missing, too. Nighttime missions are dark, yes, thats pretty cool, but
your mechs headlights often fail to highlight many objects, even when
they highlight others on either side, and are almost useless when on the
water. If you would have been able to turn high beams onto the watery
surface to reveal rippling currents glittering in the light, my heart
would have floated away in delight. Instead, you are hard pressed to
tell if your lights were on at all. And just go ahead and try and squash
the tiny ground units under foot in the training missions. Theyre
surprisingly resilient to crushing weights in a game about mass
destruction. For that matter, try playing the training missions after
youve reset your movement keys. Not only will your settings not work,
neither will the default setting. Youll have to quit out of the game
and reset your keys back to default from the main menu if you want to do
that. This isnt a big deal, I mean, whos playing the tutorial after
knowing the game well enough to reconfigure the board? Not many people,
I wager, but any time you manage to work yourself into a situation that
requires you to quit in order to continue playing is an oversight in the
programming.
Game
controls are well designed, if not simple by any means. Fully mastering
your mech takes time and practice--especially memorizing a vast number
of keys, commands, and quick reference buttons. Mechwarrior is best
played with a joystick, and is in fact designed for it. If using a
keyboard is your chosen form of cockpit, though, youll find yourself
quickly remapping the controls (default has you firing with the insert,
home, and page up keys and steering with the keypad, which cramps your
two hands uncomfortably close together). Luckily, MechWarrior allows you
to fully customize your experience, from the keyboard layout to the 1st
or 3rd person perspectives available to you.
With
the recent popularity of MechAssault on the console, in no small part
due to Xbox LIVE, its good to remember that there are still many things
that the PC systems can hold over the heads of their living room
counterparts. In the Battletech universe, MechWarrior is a far more
accurate and detailed battle creation than MechAssault could possibly
hope for. With a level of detail, weapons, and options for your mechs
improvement that makes the game a true joy to play, youll find yourself
putting in a few extra hours after dark to earn the extra cash to
purchase that new mech chassis, or the HUD jammer that Xbox owners
simply dont know exist for their battle units. Its too bad that the
release wasnt treated to a better visual upgrade, and instead leaves
you feeling like youre playing a game past its prime, only in a new
box. While the game is easily worthy if youre looking to enter the
Battletech universe for the first time, dont expect a modern polish. On
the other hand, if youre a fan of the past games, youll find
everything here that you loved about the others in the series. The
developers have stayed surprisingly close to the elements that made the
first-to-come so successful. The combination makes Mechwarrior 4:
Mercenaries an entertaining, solid game that doesnt represent anything
substantially new to the Mechwarrior lineup. While fun, it wont change
how you look upon big battle machines.
Aaron Stanton (01/19/2003) |
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Snapshot
Ups:
Good atmosphere; all the good things that made Mechwarrior famous are
still here in style; very detailed in its representation of the
Battletech universe; the gladiator-style combat is a nice touch.
Downs:
Doesn't add a great deal of anything new to the
series; dated looking graphics, and some minor inconveniences in game
design; some little things, like knocking over trees, are missing.
Platform:
PC
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