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The MechWarrior series and me [NSF56k]
Einhander
__BANNED USERS regular
__BANNED USERS regular
FUCKING MECHWARRIOR
I just got back from Best Buy and they have like 900 copies of MechAssault for the Xbox on sale for $4.99 there, so I picked up a copy. I've played MechWarrior 2 on the Saturn years ago, and have MechCommander 1 and 2 around here somewhere (I downloaded them from mechCommander.org when they were free, the site seems to be down now) but I haven't played them yet.
There seems to be a hugeassed backstory to the universe. I love big stompy mechs (and have a raging boner for the Front Mission games), but I'm not sure which games I should play first in the series? Should I track down a copy of MechWarrior
and DosBox that shit? Should I snag a copy of MW2 (probably easier to find on the Saturn or PS1)
Or can I skip ahead to MW3
or 4?
And where do the MechCommander
and MechAssault
Games fit in? I heard that in MechAssault 2 you can get out of your shit
and go steal someone else's shit, like GTA with fucking mechs. I've also heard that the MA games are much more arcade-y than the MW games are, so diehards don't like them as much because they've been "dumbed down" for the Xbox. Is anyone still playing these on Live? Can you play the MechWarrior games decently with KBAM or does a stick and throttle make a difference?
Basically tell me about Mech games and which ones are good to play.
I just got back from Best Buy and they have like 900 copies of MechAssault for the Xbox on sale for $4.99 there, so I picked up a copy. I've played MechWarrior 2 on the Saturn years ago, and have MechCommander 1 and 2 around here somewhere (I downloaded them from mechCommander.org when they were free, the site seems to be down now) but I haven't played them yet.
There seems to be a hugeassed backstory to the universe. I love big stompy mechs (and have a raging boner for the Front Mission games), but I'm not sure which games I should play first in the series? Should I track down a copy of MechWarrior
and DosBox that shit? Should I snag a copy of MW2 (probably easier to find on the Saturn or PS1)
Or can I skip ahead to MW3
or 4?
And where do the MechCommander
and MechAssault
Games fit in? I heard that in MechAssault 2 you can get out of your shit
and go steal someone else's shit, like GTA with fucking mechs. I've also heard that the MA games are much more arcade-y than the MW games are, so diehards don't like them as much because they've been "dumbed down" for the Xbox. Is anyone still playing these on Live? Can you play the MechWarrior games decently with KBAM or does a stick and throttle make a difference?
Basically tell me about Mech games and which ones are good to play.
Einhander on
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Posts
The games are more or less done ins the same chronological order as the story, so the newer MW games take place later in the timeline than the previous ones. As far as quality goes, MW2 (and expansions) plus MW3 are really the best ones. 4 was a major step back in terms of depth, and Mechassault 1+2 ditch the first person sim gameplay entirely for a 3rd person action game. Despite whiner's exaggerations, they're not bad, but they're like if the next Gran Turismo game turned out to be a top down, micro machine-esque toy racing game. Same general concept, but completely different execution.
Come to think of it, is there any chance we can get a [Game On]?
1.) The weapons (other than the Heavy Guass) have no real sting to them. It really seems to take a while to deal the requisite damage to take somebody down, although I admittedly haven't played 4 right after one of the others to get a quantifiable experience. I shouldn't have to pump 6 PPC shots (or more!) into a heavy mech's right torso to blow it off. It's also unfortunate that fun weapons like the ARROW-IV or the (very, very effective) Inferno SRM-2 were taken out.
2.) Mech building? Fuck it right in the ear. The previous games were rewarding for those who knew how to build effective mechs, which you didn't get at all in 4. I understand the purpose of typed slots on Inner Sphere mechs, but even on Clan mechs...4 slots? I can only put 4 slots of weapons in a location? That's bullshit, especially if you want to load up on some medium lasers.
Yes, I actually restored a top of the line Pentium 1 with max ram and a fairly decent sized hard drive so I could play these games. I left it at my folk's house and I played it a bit during christmas. MW 2 never gets old.
Tough times, guys.
This, right here. 4 was such a disappointment. I need to play through 2 again. I got GBL off of Ebay a little while back (had everything but that back in the day) and haven't given it a spin yet, since DOSBox fixed the switching CDs issue.
MechAssault is pretty arcadey, but for $5 it's probably worth a playthrough. Dunno if anyone's still online. MA2 was pretty bad, in my opinion -- too much time spent out of the 'Mechs. And I vaguely remember the story was kind of ridiculous, even by giant robot standards.
All the console titles were pretty arcadey, though. MW2 for the Playstation and Saturn got a similar treatment (powerups added, customization taken out). Mechwarrior and MW3050 for the SNES made MechAssault look like, I dunno, Falcon 4.0 or something.
===
Personally, I think all the Mechwarrior PC games have their strengths, and each has its loyal crowd.
MW1
Pros: Open-ended gameplay, contract negotiation, all the 'Mechs (8 of them, I think) have their playstyles and you can romp all over the AI with any of them.
Cons: The RPG portion of the game, constituting the open-endedness, can basically be simulated in Microsoft Excel nowadays -- it's not particularly deep. It takes about an hour to beat the campaign, maybe three if you screw around. Graphics and sound are dated, obviously, as is the terrain engine.
MW2
Pros: Wide variety of missions, in-game encyclopedia, great soundtrack, good immersion. MW2: Mercs has a semi-nonlinear campaign.
Cons: Clans. Fuck the Clans. The whole game focuses on what I think is the most retarded part of BattleTech, and I never got very far because of this. Also, the weapons balance is supposedly pretty bad, and pulse lasers in particular can be completely game-breaking. Doesn't really matter in singleplayer, though, and I doubt many people are doing multiplayer nowadays (what with it being pre-Internet and all).
MW3
Pros: If you're playing KB+M, this is the ideal choice, since it features a floating reticle. Good cockpit graphics. Deformable terrain, although this is more a graphics feature than a strategic consideration.
Cons: The game kind of punishes joystick players, particularly if you install the Pirate's Moon expansion (they broke joystick throttle support, so you'd have to map it with your joystick software or something). Doesn't play well with XP (random things from the game not working to jump jets or slight collisions launching you into the stratosphere), don't know about Vista. Multiplayer is peer-to-peer, and the prediction isn't particularly good.
MW4 (Note: Just get MW4: Mercs, don't even bother with Vengeance or Black Knight)
Pros: I liked the art style in MW4 a lot, particularly the concept art, although the fanatic crowd complains that about the liberties taken with the source art. MW4 is the only one worthwhile online, although I don't know if anyone still plays on public servers. I also think terrain was much improved over the other games, although I was amused to find out that people who live in the Midwest apparently find hills higher than 10m high appallingly unrealistic. There's also a set of fanmade mods that adds a lot of 'Mechs to the game, although I think they (mainly) only work in multiplayer mode.
Cons: BattleTech fanatics hate this game a lot because it doesn't adhere very closely to the rules or the art.
Also worth mentioning:
BattleTech: the Crescent Hawks' Revenge
Kind of a prototypical RTS, and pretty fun if you can find it and want to run it through DOSBOX. Gives a pretty good feel for the BattleTech universe at the time of the (ugh) Clan invasion. I personally wouldn't recommend the first game, Crescent Hawks' Inception, which had turn-based combat, but a lot of people seem to have good memories of it.
Man, I haven't seen that game in years, since it first came out. Wow... the last time I saw that, those graphics blew me the fuck away.
Time flies.
I like 3 the most in general, but I've never played 2. I doubt I could play something so ugly.
I liked mechcommander 2, but I remember hearing it got a lot of flak for some reason or another. Whatever. How can you resist Urbies?
Mw4 Was dumbed down for the Xbox. Enough is said,it couldve had massive potential but Microsoft butchered it to pander to you console bitches.
o_O
Goddamn spoiled kids.
Hey, screw you, you condescending asshole.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
I think you ought to play MW4 and give MW3 a cursory glance, myself, but I wasn't a fan of the floating reticle. I think it depends mostly on how much you have invested in the BattleTech ruleset/artwork. I don't really care about the rules and actively dislike the artwork (in general), and liked MW4 fine.
Given that all 4 games are cheap now, I'd suggest picking up MW3 and 4:Mercs (Not plain 4, which sucks, but Mechwarrior 4:Mercenaries, which does not such as much). The MW4 community is still pretty strong considering how old the game is, and the mektek stuff adds like, six dozen new mechs and weapons to the game. And elementals, which are rad.
The music contained therein is potentially awesome.
http://timur.iserver.net/mw2/sounds/startingup.wav
And oh lord... memories.
Battletech: Crescent Hawks' Inception
That ole turn based strategy game where the best mech you could get was the Chameleon you 'stole' at the beginning of the game.
Battletech: Crescent Hawks' Revenge
Real time strategy where actions had an effect on the next level.
And I loved MW4. Vengeance and Black Knight were decent, but man I got years of MW4: Mercs under my belt. Hiring new pilots and choosing their Mechs, choosing your side in the war. Multiplayer was incredible in its peak. Playing in a MW4:Mercs league was incredibly deep and competitive.
MA2 had a decent idea for multiplayer, but it failed in many regards. Fighting individual battles determined your chosen House's control of the galaxy. I played religously for a week, but it became incredibly elitist. If you weren't part of the top clans of your House, you were kicked. Singleplayer was horrible.
And man, the Clans were the best part of the story, you stravag. I was holding out for a MechWarrior 5 that told the story of the invasion or defeat at Tukayyid from the Clan's perspective.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
I'm condescending? I'm not the one referring to a perfectly fine graphical engine as "ugly", and refusing to play it because of said graphics, because it wasn't made this decade.
The game is fine and looks much better than the first generation of 3D accelerated games. Try playing Shadows of the Empire now.
Oh man, Dark Reign and Heavy Gear files too at that link! 9th grade all over again.
I've got the CDs for all those and the Mechwarrior games too. Man oh man, getting that Marauder IIc in the demo for Mechwarrior II was killer. The only thing more satisfying then cruising around in that mech with my reactor always on the brink of shutdown was being in a TIE Defender.
Ah but yeah play them all if you get the chance, even Mechwarrior IV. It has its problems but it's still fun.
I sex you now. I forgot how wicked the music was. I remeber actually putting the gamedisc in my cdplayer simply for the music.
And i swear there was some sort of mechwarrior spam on the XboX. if not,im sorry. But im still blaming Microsoft and console hoes!
I gotta side with you here, I had Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries at launch. I ran that thing on a Pentium 133, 40 megs of Ram and no graphics card and I thought it was gorgeous. Do you remember looking at the back of the box and seeing how it would look with one of those new "graphics cards"? So beautiful.
I tried to play Mechwarrior 4. After the amazing experience of 3 I was ready for something new, only to get no farther htan the tutorial because i couldn't fucking stand the control scheme.
Why they decided the mouse shouldn't be used to aim anymore is beyond me...
God, I fucking loved that game.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
I think spending hours every day in Kali and NetMech when I was 8 years old made me a better human being.
I asked my dad to get me a game with robots in it. He came home with Mechwarrior 3. Hell yes. This was my introduction to the battletech universe. I loved the hell out of it. I played it on MSN gaming zone where the game had an amazing community. With clans that formed leagues that conformed to the continuity of the games, this was amazing. I played so much, and made a lot of really good friends playing that game. I got the books too, which I really loved. They are a bit cheesy now that I go back to read them but they are still good, I love the story.
Mechwarrior 4 came out and not everybody made the transition, but the community was still around a little. I had fun with that to. Soon after that, however.. the abominations known as Mechassault 1 and 2 came out. I mean, taken on their own they are not bad. But compared to the rest... just no. The 'mechs can cloak? what? That was just the icing on the cake after Microsoft took the battletech universe and completely fucked it over. It was good, but they turned everything on its head and just ruined the storyline so hard. The good old days will never be back. Fuck Mechwarrior Dark Ages so hard.
But yeah. Mechwarrior 3 was good times.
I used the mouse to aim for MW4.
:^:
Not to shit on a MechWarrior thread, but Heavy Gear is also pretty awesome. My brother was more into the mech games, but I remember enjoying Heavy Gear for what it was.
The community is found here (along with the community expansions, just ask in the forum)
http://www.mektek.net/joomla/index.php
A piece of the action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylf2oQyCNOA
And i am proud to say thats me playing ^^
I probably should have tweaked the controls or something, but it didn't occur to me at the time (cause I'm retarded), and the default scheme annoyed the living shit out of me and made it impossible to focus on what I was doing.
Mechwarrior 2 (and to a certain extent its immediate sequels GBL and Mercs) will always be my favorite.
The atmosphere and design of Mech2 left a lasting impression on me. Devoid of lame voice acting and pre-determined character role, I was forced to use my imagination to fill in the gaps. I know, such a thing would be unspeakable in a game today but back then it was wonderful and immersive.
I feel Mech2 is superior to 3 and 4 because things were still grounded in the tabletop universe. You could mix and match weapons how you saw fit because spots (criticals) were used instead of things like "Missle-only" areas like in Mech4. The in game world represented these choices fairly accurately. Wanna put a laser on your head? Go ahead and watch a single laser beam fire out of your head area in the game. Wanna store all your ammo in your left torso? Sure, but don't be surprised to see a solid shot from another mech ignite your ammo taking a good chunk of your mech with it. This kind of stuff might have been present in 3 because I got the least far in that one, but I know it wasn't in 4.
Mech 2 also had awesome visualization modes. There was night vision ("Vision - Enchancement - Engaged"), an awesome wireframe mode for some reason, and a satellite up-link view where you could view and zoom into yourself from a top down perspective.
I bought the titanium versions of the Mech2 trilogy and was kinda disappointed. Basically they existed as a way to get the series to run well on Win98 and use basic texture mapping and light sourcing. For some reason they decided to take out the 1024x768 option from the original, which was cool as hell, especially for a game released in 1995. Also, in order to fit that new version of the game and keep the old version they truncated all the music tracks, which is what has kept my love of this game burning for so long. So, Rolo, thanks for that link. I've had the music ripped to my hard drive forever, but now I get to know the track names. "Pyre Light" sounds a hell of a lot cooler than "Track 12."
Fuck I just remembered that in Mech2 you could actually call in air support, and in the later games you could pilot an "elemental" suit, which was kinda like the Battletech universe's EXO suit. God damn what a cool game.
No fanboy ramble would be complete without some favorite mechs:
First the magnificent Timberwolf (Mad Cat in subsequent games):
And for some reason I always loved this guy, the Marauder IIc:
Hey, you, pumping station looking thing, I don't like the way you looked at me have some missiles oh now you're a pile of debris.
For an action game, it's really good. I'm trying to track down some of the sims for the PC, I'm curious to see how differently they play. The only thing I really wish is that I could actually customise my mech, which I understand is a key part of the PC Mech games.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Many of the old school classics have gone open-source, and have thus received a number of graphical updates and mods from the fan community over the years. This has not happened with Mechwarrior 2. I want to play the game again, but I can never get it to run, not even in DOSbox. It's such a crime that nothing has been done with it.