LRFotS Randale6 is back with another excellent short guest poast, which hearkens back to the good ol’ days of GIANT STOMPY MECHS – which was not all that long ago, for those of us who enjoyed games like Battlezone II and TitanFall. Here, we have a review about a not-that-recent, but still fun, Mechwarrior game, in the style of the game reviews we used to have on sites like Reaxxion. (Where, as some of you old-timers might remember, yer very ‘eavy, very ‘umble servant was once a guest columnist.)
My thanks as always to our friend for his contributions – and I encourage others to submit game reviews in a similar vein.
Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries – A Review
Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is perhaps the first inkling of the mech genre’s revival. The game itself was launched in 2019. Since that point, it has drastically improved thanks to both constant free updates and paid DLC content. The following are the basics that I will flesh out later.
Gameplay: ****
Replayability: ****
Story: **
Value for money: ***
Gameplay
Do you like small, zippy mechs? Do you like giant, stompy mechs? Do you like mechs that can headshot you from two kilometres out? Do you like mechs so stupid that they shouldn’t exist? All of that and more is available in this game. Indeed, gameplay and replayability are the reasons to get the game, the main storyline is lackluster to say the least.
What stops the gameplay from being a full five stars is mainly an issue with the game’s design and setting. They made the curious choice to have the game set in the Fourth Succession War, and its aftermath. What this means is that we don’t have access to all the fun toys for mechs and in a game centred on mechs, well… thats just disappointing. Gimme me my rotary autocannons, MRMs, and XL engine swaps!
Tailing off from that is that the mechlab (and thus customisation) is dumbed down. No customisation beyond weapons, heat sinks, armor values, and some misc equipment. While some of this is made up for by in game difficulty sliders (such as increased cooling) it still doesn’t feel right for a Mechwarrior title.
Now as for the meat of it, the in-game missions are fairly satisfying. The main let down is poor AI for both teammates and enemies. Yes that sniper mech with the secondary (and short range) medium lasers is going to try closing into the optimal firing range for those medium lasers, often getting killed in the process. That sucks.
Replayability
The game has extreme replayability so long as you enjoy the core gameplay loop, it is procedural generation’s best use case personified. It also has plenty of DLC campaigns and allows you to play almost every story or campaign mission in stand alone mode. The main replayabilty issue is the AI, that is the only problem.
Story
Main storyline sucks (it is basically shoehorning a campaign into a sandbox) and has some very idiotic moments. Campaign DLC is much better thankfully.
Value for Money
This is a three because I’m splitting the difference between PC gamers (a solid four for us, join the master race, you know you want to) and console gamers (it’s a two for you guys ‘cos you got no Steam sales). Note I am assuming your not paying full price a six year old AA title, if you do that it ain’t worth it regardless.
Further things to understand on the value proposition between the two types of gamer types. On PC this game is both easier to play and gives you access to a boatload of great mods (which will fix 90% of the game’s failings). Now on the first point do note something, the last time I seriously used a video game controller was with the N64. Since then I have been exclusively mouse and keyboard, so the fact that I found a Xbox controller to be sucky for this game may have more to do with me than the controller.
One other thing to note is that Piranha Studios isn’t that bad about nickle-and-dime-ing you to death with DLC content. If the game is on sale so is the DLC, often with discounts of fifty percent or better.
1 Comment
The only proper way to play a MechWarrior game is with a full HOTAS stick and throttle setup. 🙂
I was going to fire up Clans once I got sick of XWVM and Doom: The Dark Ages, but I might play this one first now. MW2 was my first BattleTech experience, so I have a big soft spot for the funny-talking militant space furries.
Sounds like the Mechlab is closer to MW4 (which is the last one I played) than 2 or 3. Makes sense though, omnimechs don’t exist yet in the Inner Sphere in this timeframe.