I cause a shower of sparks, and chunks of the enemy ’Mech - sometimes entire limbs - fall off when a shot lands right where I aimed it. When I fire ballistic shells, my massive machine jerks to one side. The team at Piranha Games absolutely nailed that aspect of the game, from the way the units move to the impact of the weapons that they carry. We are the ones who are imbuing that personality into them, though, because it makes us feel better.” “That we talk to them and that we name them because our lives depend on them. “I wanted to treat the machines in the way a World War II tank or aircraft was treated,” BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman told me in 2017. The MechWarrior universe, and the BattleTech universe that came before it, is about the bond between man and machine. Why can’t I see the enemies on my minimap? And why are all of my lancemates walking in front of me before I fire? Who knows? Image: Piranha Games via Polygon Rock ’ em sock ’ em Why keep trying at all, when so much goes wrong, so often? Why hit the restart button instead of uninstalling the game? Because MechWarrior 5 does one thing well, in general, but it’s a very important thing: It’s a game that understands how MechWarrior as a property is fueled by personality, and it brings these monstrous machines to life remarkably well. They invariably stray from that position, often bumping into me as I line up a shot.ĭuring a game last week, my long-range missile boat beat me to the target in a footrace, then stepped right in front of me as I pulled the trigger on my Gauss rifle. I sometimes tell them to climb to the top of the nearest hill, to fire their long-range weaponry while I get in close to handle my business with the enemy units. I can give them simple commands - move, stay, hold your fire - but they don’t always listen. My allies aren’t much better at this, unfortunately. MechWarrior 5 would be unplayable without the restart button These 30-ton war machines can literally fly, but not a single one of them has ever lifted off on my watch. Some of these ’Mechs have jump jets, of course, but not one of them has thought to actually use them. I’ve seen Cicadas that rattle around inside their fortifications, tearing their own bases to shreds trying to get out and into the fray. I’ve watched the AI drive a Commando with abandon, loping across a battlefield only to stomp directly through the warehouse full of women and children they were sent there to protect. And that’s fine, or at least not an instant deal-breaker, because I can always restart a mission if it all goes to hell.Īnd it almost always goes to hell, because all the other computer-controlled pilots on the battlefield are idiots. Or maybe a lot broken, depending on who you ask in the community. That’s because MechWarrior 5 is a little broken. Why worry about a battle if you can start from the beginning of that skirmish at any time?īut MechWarrior 5 would be unplayable without the restart button. In fact, that button kind of flies in the face of what games of this nature do well, which is build stakes. It’s not a design that should lend itself to a “restart” button. Failure isn’t the end it’s just another wrinkle in your campaign. Having to rebuild your lance after a mission goes bad is part of the drama, and having your entire career ended by bankruptcy if you don’t manage your resources well across multiple missions is a feature of the game. While it’s not quite as twitchy as Spelunky or capricious as FTL: Faster Than Light, you’re meant to make a run at the whole story, carrying over both losses and wins from each battle. Thematically, MechWarrior 5 is structured as a roguelike. This makes it easier to avoid accidentally falling off a cliff, or into a lava flow in the heat of battle.īut my favorite button in the game is a very taboo button indeed. There’s even a button to make sure that your legs are lined up with your torso, which forces you to look in the same direction in which you’re moving. There are buttons for lasers, buttons for missiles, buttons to issue orders to your lance, and buttons to move your ’Mech. There’s a lot to keep track of inside your ’Mech, and a lot of buttons that control the various systems. The game can be played in third-person mode to get a better sense of your surroundings, but you can also get right inside the cockpit by playing in the first-person view. You and up to three allies - which comprise a “lance” in the series’ vernacular - are bristling with exotic weapons, and only by working together can you take down the dozens of enemies aligned against you in each mission. The arcade-style simulation game is about flinging yourself into battle inside a building-sized walking tank. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is a game about big stompy robots and, like every other big stompy robot game that has come before it, MechWarrior 5 requires an awful lot of buttons to play.
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