General Game Notes

Story treatment

Following MechWarrior tradition, the game's plot (such as it is) will be revealed as you go along. The story can get a bit lost in your immediate concerns, and it's not quite the intricate work like Tolstoy's War and Peace, but it does well enough. In fact, I found the lack of huge plot twists, deaths of your one true love, etc. to be quite refreshing. Simply put, you are a member of a military unit and behave as such. You get your orders, do your job, and are grateful to see another day. Along the way, you find a few members of your scattered force to help you out. Information on the rest of this expedition is slowly revealed, and it makes for an interesting sub-plot, finding out what went wrong with your massive invasion force.

Gauss Rifle fire

Gauss Rifle Zoomed

Documents

There are 3 manuals - a key reference card (big mofo), the game manual and 'Mech guide. All are high quality, well planned and thought out. The game manual seems to be the most disappointing, since it doesn't really tell you all that much about the rich BattleTech universe, but it is a good guide to getting the game running. The key reference card will be with you for a good long while. There's quite a bit to learn, even if some of the keys are simply increments (ie, F1-F5 select weapon groups, 1-0 sets speed.) The 'Mech manual has an action pose of each 'Mech, 3 profiles and an isometric view, as well as the standard loadout and a short description of each 'Mech in the game. This is a step up from most game manuals.

Beware of friendly fire

Violent ammo exchange

The garage

The list of 'Mechs, in alphabetical order (Inner Sphere names for all): Annihilator, Avatar, Black Hawk, Bushwacker, Cauldron-Born, Champion, Daishi, Firefly, Mad Cat, Orion, Owens, Puma, Shadow Cat, Strider, Sunder, Supernova, Thor and Vulture. The Vulture, Sunder, Shadow Cat and Puma are my favourites. You just look at a Vulture, and say to yourself "I'm going to play that 'Mech till the end of the game." 4 pulse lasers (2 medium, 2 large) and a twin array of LRM20s make this 60 ton 'Mech a long range and close range nightmare. The Sunder is worth mention too. It is only the 3rd 'new' Inner Sphere 'Mech on my favourites list (Raven and Mauler are the other two.) That's pretty surprising, considering how ammo-reliant this 'Mech is (I run from ammunition dependant BattleMechs like a bat outta hell.)