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MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries Review November 16, 2002 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries is the follow-up title to 2000's smash hit, MechWarrior 4. Mercenaries has some big shoes to fill, and we're not talking clown boots either. Besides the legacy to live up to, the game is also tasked with bringing a mercenary atmosphere to life. Does it succeed? Read Jakub's review and find out!
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 7 ) |
Money for nothing? Ha!
Mercenaries. Mercenaries are soldiers for hire, men whose loyalty belongs to none but the highest bidder. Their loyalty goes only as far as their desire to keep a good reputation drives them to. No one wants to die for money they’ll never spend. In the Inner Sphere, the core of the BattleTech universe, mercenaries are the dominant military force. Even the most powerful Great Houses, like Kurita (Draconis Combine) or Steiner-Davion (Federated Commonwealth) are forced to employ mercenaries to supplement the forces they can muster. This almost-medieval state of militarism has been pervasive since the fall of the Star League.
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Though they played a vital role in stopping the invasion of the Clans, mercenaries have fallen in importance as relative peace has descended upon the Inner Sphere and the Houses have had time to strengthen their own forces. The Federated Commonwealth seems unassailably strong and it looks like a new Star League might develop after all. Then one day, all hell breaks loose. Katrina Steiner takes advantage of the escalation of a regional conflict to declare the independence of the Lyran Alliance from the Federated Commonwealth, splitting the realm in half. Wars erupt against the remnants of the Federated Commonwealth, though they prove to be merely a prelude to the FedCom-Lyran Alliance war.
What do I care?
This then, is the backdrop for MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. The player starts the game in command of a new mercenary team, which has been sponsored by one of four established mercenary companies – the Kell Hounds, Gray Death Legion, Wolf’s Dragoons or the Northwind Highlanders. Each of these conveys a small but unique benefit upon the player. Wolf’s Dragoons, for example, allow the player early access to Clan technology, while a company sponsored by the Highlanders will receive better pay for their missions.
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As a mercenary, you are originally politically neutral. You don’t have a reputation, you don’t have alliances and you are neither notorious nor famous. Unlike a regular army unit, a mercenary gets to enjoy some freedom. They pick and choose missions, buy their own equipment and hire the pilots that fight for them. Of course, the missions that a player picks, often decide what side of the conflict they become embroiled in. If a company consistently picks one side’s contracts over the other, that other side might stop offering theirs, particularly if they are on the receiving end of the mercenary’s work!
SIDEBAR: Athlon/Pentium 700Mhz
128MB of RAM
16MB DirectX 8 video card
8X CD-Rom
FS Recommends
1GHz processor
256MB of RAM
GF3 or better
| Interface | Page:: ( 2 / 7 ) |
Looks familiar
MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries follows the pattern set by MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. It takes the core game and modifies it for a mercenary campaign. Elements are unchanged unless necessary. The most obvious change that was necessary for Mercenaries is an updated interface. The interface is now capable of giving players the option of choosing from a few missions visible on the star map, as well as hiring pilots and buying equipment.
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With MechWarrior 4, we were very pleased with the simplicity of the interface. It worked remarkably well and was very intuitive. The Mercenaries interface generally follows the same attributes though it has suffered from the passage of time and the necessary updates for a Mercenaries game haven’t been pulled off as smoothly as they should have.
The obvious problems
There were several moments were I found myself feeling irritation with the front-end interface, though only two were notable. The first is rather simple, perhaps even a seat-to-keyboard interface issue. Starting a new campaign is not intuitive. If you already have a campaign in progress, you’d have to go to the Rosters menu to create a new company, rather than clicking the ‘campaign’ button. Unintuitive bits like this pop up here and there with more consistency than we care for.
The larger problem, one for which we found no simple solution, was in the buying and selling interface. Mechs all come in various models, though every ‘Mech can be individually customized to suit your needs. The problem comes when the player tries to sell one of these mechanical monstrosities, but has more than one ‘Mech of the model he’s trying to sell. The ‘Mechs are all identified with a number and a name, so players can expect to see a Mauler-17 and a Mauler-43. Given that the player will have Mauler-17 before he salvages Mauler-43, it’s logical to assume that the perfectly customized one will be 17. Unfortunately, the game interface decides to sell the lower-number one first. There is no way to specify which individual ‘Mech to sell. Players are forced to drag and drop the model into the sell menu. Now, this would be a moot point if ‘Mechs didn’t have a weekly upkeep cost, or if they weren’t the actual primary income the player has from a mission.
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The rest of the interface works splendidly and does a magnificent job of satisfying any requirement a player might have. Weapons and chassis can be arranged by category to make purchasing and browsing easier, everything is drag-and-drop or selectable from drop-down menus. Yet here is where things start to feel a bit dated. The whole impression we had of the interface by the end of the game was not of a game interface, but of a fancy database or spreadsheet menu. Gamers want to feel immersed, not like they just got off filling out databases and spreadsheets at work, only to manipulate more of the same at home.
Control of the ‘Mechs is, as with MW4, brilliant. Even a basic joystick provides a satisfactory experience, though we do recommend one with rudder controls (for torso twisting). Mouse and keyboard work, but along with sports games this is one of the few genres on the PC that requires a real controller for the ultimate experience.
SIDEBAR: Pentium 4 2GHz
256MB RAM
Abit GF4 4200 OTES
VIA P4PB
| Graphics and Sound | Page:: ( 3 / 7 ) |
Is that you, grandpa?
Although the technological blur has slowed down noticeably over the past couple of years, and games released in 1999 (Quake III, UT) still look impressive, MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries has fallen behind the curve. Maybe it’s just unlucky timing, since we’re seeing the next great leap forward with games like UT2K3 and of course the upcoming Doom III, but MW4 is not up to spec in terms of graphics. This is not helped by the various pictures of pilots in the front-end interface, or most of the graphical interface as a whole.
The game isn’t bad by any means. Nobody can fault the units for looking blocky, since they are blocky by design. Yet the terrain isn’t as impressive as it seemed back in the day. What were once lush, rolling hills and forbidding tundra environments, packed with cutely animated sprite critters and foliage, are now the last gasps of a two-year-old graphics engine. The terrain is distinctly blocky now, and the textures have much lower resolutions than we’ve become used to over the past few months. The non-interactive sprite characters running across the ground, which were amusing and once added atmosphere to the game, now also serve as reminders of the game’s limitations.
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Even the ‘Mechs themselves could stand a bit of tuning. No one expects them to be more elaborate than they are, but they could use a few effects – like a reflective sheen from a fresh paint job. That said the ‘Mechs and the special effects have held up best. Animations are still silky-smooth and impressive, as ‘Mechs rumble across the landscape, recoil from a missile volley and limp in retreat with a damaged leg. And while we could imagine better laser effects, in general the special effects in the game can’t be argued with.
Aural delights
We’ve been saying this for a while and it’s probably old hat, but there’s only so much you can do with sound. MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries is a perfect example. One could put it up against today’s latest titles and make convincing arguments for its sound effects. The speech isn’t the best, granted, but the music and combat effects are considerably more than adequate.
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As with the graphics though, little has been done to the sound in the game that is new and fresh. Perhaps the music is different, and it just resembles the MW4 tracks? Or maybe the songs are identical. We’d compare, but our original MechWarrior 4 discs elude us. This lack of new content is somewhat disturbing, considering that Mercenaries is a full-priced title.
SIDEBAR: MechWarrior 4 was a killer LAN party deathmatch title. How nobody else figured out to use LBX-20 autocannons in a city environment is beyond me. Then again, most of them didn’t even use torso-twist. ^.-
| Gameplay | Page:: ( 4 / 7 ) |
PPCs make my day
The thrill of BattleMech combat comes in many levels. First, there’s the customization and design that occurs before battle. Is your next mission on a really cold planet? Then maybe it’s time to stock up on energy weapons, since the improved heat dissipation might make them even more efficient than ballistic weapons. Of course, if the planet is hot, ballistics could be the order of the day even if you are expecting a drawn-out fight where you may run out of ammo. That is, unless you happen to be fighting near a body of water! As you can see, there’s a great deal to consider before the fight even begins.
When fighting, players have to keep track of their lancemates, give orders and use terrain strategically. Often, you will find yourself vastly outnumbered. Keeping a low profile and firing from behind a hill during the first few crucial moments of a battle can make all the difference. The strategies are obvious – if you have long range weapons, keep backpedaling… and yet, these decisions are where the challenge lies. Your opponent may out-range you, but that doesn’t mean it’s smart to rush in with AC20 autocannons. By the time you reach him, you just may very well be dead. So the trick is to make him come to you; hide behind something.
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Then again, I could just be bullshitting and trying to make a destructive rampage in a 100-ton juggernaut sound a lot more sophisticated than it is! Of course, if you buy into that, you may find yourself in store for a rude shock at the Arena or on the battlefield.
Changes
Mercenaries offers players limited freedom within the game. After choosing a sponsor company, it’s time to pick a mission. Initially, there are only two available. None of the missions are affected by what sponsor the player chooses, only the equipment, funds and company logo are. As players go through the missions, depending what missions they choose and (on rare occasions) what they do during the mission, the plot may change. There are three possible endings for the game, not counting the player’s death. A dedicated gamer can reach an ending in two days, perhaps one if he’s very quick, playing on low difficulty level or can put in a marathon play session. Just because there are three endings, don’t take it to mean that there are at least 6 days of gameplay. Since most of the missions repeat on the way to the endings, you can expect perhaps a half dozen unique missions per ending.
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Despite the title, the mercenary aspect in the game is very limited. Yes, players collect cash for missions, buy their equipment and sell salvage. Yes, they can compete in the Arena and get a name for themselves. It’s too bad these are all superficial changes. Access to powerful ‘Mechs and weapons is restricted early on. The payouts of missions including salvage, steadily increases as one would expect, but only at a pace to keep players on par with their expenditures. So unless someone is playing at a difficulty level far below their skills, they won’t be over-equipped or have a team that’s abusively large and competent. For balance reasons, a player can’t determine how many ‘Mechs he wants to send on a mission, but this just has the effect of further restricting the freedoms one could expect from being a mercenary. All in all, the differences between MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries and MechWarrior 4 itself are like the differences between GM cars in the ‘80s. A few styling cues, a different name and an option or two separate the two titles, but little else.
Fun fun?
The combat itself is identical to MechWarrior 4. In-game mechanics have only been updated in the “more is better” style, where there are now more ‘Mechs to fight with and against, and battles are significantly larger. Since MechWarrior 4 was so much fun, we obviously enjoyed the combat in MechWarrior as well. Of course, the brevity of the campaign and the limited differences between the two titles make us suspect that Mercenaries could have easily been an expansion pack.
SIDEBAR: Xbox is definitely coming into its own. MechAssault, Steel Battalion and Splinter Cell are killer apps. 2003 should be a better year for the console than 2002 was, if people can manage to look beyond the PlayStation name.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 5 / 7 ) |
Pros
Gameplay. It’s a mark of a good original design when the combat is unchanged over two years and is still thrilling today. Of course, it’s also an indication that this could have been just an expansion pack as well…
Interface. Although it’s got a few minor issues and is showing its age, the interface is still clean, intuitive and effective.
Stability. One of the more stable games out there, which is always a polarizing issue as Christmas rolls around. Publishers keep titles on hold or release them early for Christmas, producing a very hit-and-miss atmosphere.
Multiplayer. It’s as fun as it was with the original MW4, though like many titles, best reserved for the LAN party.
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Cons
Innovation. There has been very little done to the game that is innovative or interesting. Considering that one could see a MechWarrior/Privateer hybrid with the Mercenaries license, it’s a wonder that Microsoft after two years managed to only come out with a few light modifications worthy of an expansion pack. Some features like the nobility/notoriety ratings don’t seem to have that much of an effect on the game either.
Dated. Three months earlier we wouldn’t be bringing this up. Up until then, there has been little in the way of graphical upheavals. Unfortunately for Mercenaries, it launched just as next-generation titles are out.
Length. There may be three endings, but when you follow the same path 80% of the way to each ending, that doesn’t leave a lot of actual diversity. What’s more criminal is that it could take a determined player a day, or two at most to beat the game. Casual gamers could be done within a week.
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SIDEBAR: For all the interesting ‘Mech designs, new and old in Mercenaries, I still miss the good old Behemoth.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 6 / 7 ) |