Mechwarrior 5 (vs. Battletech)

"Let's go driving and toolin' around
We could always get lost in the crowd"

 

Garbage - Get Busy with the Fizzy

 

 

Feelin' a hankerin' fer SciFi before I return to medieval themed games, I bethought meself to get mechanical and warlike. Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries was one of my earliest PC games, probably the first to truly enthrall me. I also played the previous Mech2 thanks to an acquaintance, loved Mech Commander for its own particular charm, but Mechwarrior 3 gave me pause, its development restricted in favor of graphics and destructible environments, to the detriment of campaign length and general variety/complexity. Given the Mechwarrior series was also one of the last names in vehicular simulation to garner interest outside its niche audience, I can't entirely condemn the gamble on visual immersion... but it failed. When Mech4 stirred only mildly improved user chatter, I simply didn't bother. Given the series stalling out with Mechwarrior Online apparently I wasn't the only one.

So when Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries' price finally dropped to almost reasonable levels I decided it might be a hoot to chronicle a campaign comparing it to its recent adaptational competitor, Harebrained's Battletech, step by step like a role-playing story, admitting my bias toward turn-based strategy over first-person shooting. That idea went out the window a few missions into MW5. A few artlessly randomized, repetitive  missions.

 

I'd assumed Piranha BytesGames would have marketed to stand out from Harebrained Schemes' Battletech, stake out their own interpretation of the source material. Instead, even the opening cinematic re-hashes the same dead(-ish) mentor boilerplate except longer, simpler, louder, flashier. Immediately after that you're thrown into a fully mobile human mode as a genre novelty.  Eh, thinks I, guess I liked sniping windshields on foot well enough in Battlezone 2, so I might like it here too. But I HATE being forced to play a premade character, even if it is just a last name. The crew, much like the dead mentor setup, looks hilariously copy-pasted from Battletech, immediately throwing in your face a female officer (Ryana/Sumire) and a middle-eastern mechanic (Murad/Fahad) whose... Britstraliohannesburgian(?) accents double as your introduction to Mech5's nauseatingly cheesy voicing. Forget Battletech's more subdued, self-controlled action hero one-liners, mildly believable for people who risk their lives on a daily basis. Mech5 seems obsessed with playing up the setting's MILITARY SciFi, which obviously means talking like dem super-cool soldier types on da teevee. So instead of personalized callsigns, everyone's "lieutenant" this-and-that, and instead of "heads up, commander, you've got incoming" you get lines like "recon has just reported additional bogies, heading along a trajectory that intersects with your position" yadda-yadda, jabber-jabber. CLEAR COMMS! Plus, the moment they said the word "smoke" they telegraphed the most likely engame villains. And the music... is actually not too bad, even if more generic than MW2Mercs' instantly evocative, techno-punk personality.

 

So much for atmosphere.

What about gameplay?

Follows suit. At least load times are quick enough to match modern standards, outshining Battletech's worst feature by a mile, with detailed environments and no FPS drops... though it comes at the cost of spiking my Geforce 2060's temperature to 80C. But the interactivity which makes a game a game is dumbed down to suit the idiot-friendly presentation, and I can illustrate that in three screenshots.

 

You pick up random goodie crates as you stomp around each map, in the worst tradition of D&D treasure chests, or more aptly Sonic the Hedgehog stomping ring boxes.

Turrets randomly pop up out of the ground, one-shottable along with tanks and helicopters constantly streaming in. Even enemy mechs lack fog of war pings. Your missions largely resolve to skeet shooting / whack-a-mole, except:

You're also forced to occasionally shoot up enemy bases, with absurd numbers of damage sponge buildings needing piecemeal demolition. Found a gas pipe to blow up, speeding the process by a few percent? Count yourself lucky, because otherwise even trying to shoot the bottom floor out from under a skyscraper will only result in it sitting pretty on its technically "destroyed" supports until you arduously laser every damn floor to death individually.

Luckily you get nearly infinite ammo. Machine guns, as an example, go from 200rounds per ton in MW2 (yes, fine, too low) to a ridiculous 5200rounds in MW5. In fifteen hours of gameplay I think I ran out of ammo for exactly ONE weapon.

If there are any status effects like water cooling or volcanic planet ambient heat (sandstorms supposedly do weaken lasers at least) they're not actively displayed on your HUD.

No numeric values for armor/internals.

C-Bills flow like lube on a porn set. I accrue more spare cash by the time I start killing Centurions than in Battletech running full 400-ton teams.

Even your timeline can only be fast-forwarded to the next official event instead of giving you day-by-day control like Battletech's.

That "human mode" I thought might expand upon Battlezone 2's showing? Completely unused so far except for walking between your two interactable NPCs. If you want to switch mechs you just instantly teleport from cockpit to cockpit, without even a trace of in-universe justification.

Overall the message is as clear as an Atlas stomping on your face: this is an FPS and therefore tailored to the tastes of brainless twitch-gamer trash. Don't think. Don't plan ahead, don't ask for information, don't worry about resource management. Just point and click like a good little drooling cretin.

 

Sad. I'd missed stomping around in bipedal war machines, but... this? The series never moved past MW3. Battletech, despite its glaring flaws, added to the MW/MechCommander formula. MW5Mercs is still stuck in the '90s. Wanna know how weak it is?

 

I re-re-re-uninstalled Battletech today in temporary disgust. A mission ended with an enemy dropship landing in an unadvertised spot, basically as a cinematic send-off. Except it landed on a Zeus with 3 PPCs and an LRM15, MY FAVORITE TOY, telefragging it and the pilot both. No warning, no justification, no saving throw. Just a bolt of divine lightning like a teenage dungeon master's tantrum, randomly costing me millions. One of the most idiotic possible ways to screw the player over, utterly unjustifiable!

 

Yet still, by next year when I've cooled off, I can see myself reinstalling Battletech for a few more missions... but MW5? Fuck it. I can get better turreted vehicular combat by swiveling my lance in Bannerlord.