MechWarrior 4: Vengeance

The Good
The detail graphics, as there's a lot of things moving about you. Walk through a forest and scare up a flock of birds. Walk through a town or a base and see people running about (sorry, you can't squish them or shoot them). You get a lot more camo paint jobs. The towns and terrain elevation details are a lot more significant, as you can stand on top of a hill and snipe at other mechs. The LRM salvo now looks absolutely gorgeous as they arch into the sky in white contrails and rain down upon your enemies... Good variety of terrain (coastal, swamp, moon, urban, desert, and more). Good variety of enemies (there's a mission where you need to engage two naval ships!) Some new equipment available (like laser anti-missile system, ECM, flare launcher and light intensifier), ability to choose day or night missions (in most cases)

The Bad
The damage to the mechs are much simplified, as the parts are just "charred". (compared to MW3's broken bits trailing sparks). The combat tempo is faster, and mechs seem to be more resistant to damage or the weapons are weaker. The new mechlab is MUCH more restrictive on what you can or cannot put on a mech compared to previous Mechlabs in MW2 or MW3, as the mechs now have different types of hardpoints for different types of weapons (hints of Starsige!), lousy mission briefings as they don't tell you about the mission itself.

The Bottom Line
MW4 is a step in a different direction for the Mechwarrior series. The game came on two CDs. The install is either compact (at 450 megs) or full (1.1 gig). The game also installed DX8, which is required.

The backstory is improved, as the intro movie, a combination of CGI and live action / blue screen, sets up the struggle quite well.

The initial control scheme is quite strange, as they use three of the buttons to control the 3 fire groups, but you COULD remap the keys to what you like (strangely, there's no way to simply LOAD another control config or to save your config).

You get a lot of "video-mail" as part of your mission briefing, which is surprisingly UNDETAILED, with NO discussion of the nav points what's at each location, etc., at least when compared to MW3.

Once you got into the game, the in-game engine is used to render most of the cut-scenes. The graphics are good, as the weapons effects are a bit over-the-top, but looks good. The PPC weapons effect, however, looks quite bad, and the gauss rifle now has the standard "Eraser/Quake" backtrail. The mechs are quite nicely detailed, and they now walk with a bit more "bounce" than before. However, the graphics seem to be designed for 1024x768, as they look fuzzy at lower resolutions.

The combat tempo, however, is very different from the previous games. It used to be that an assault mech can destroy a scout mech in one or two salvoes. Not any more! Even a small mech like Cougar takes a dozen PPC bolts to destroy. While this look good, I'm NOT certain it a step in the right direction.

There is ONE branch in the campaign tree (yep, just one). I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but it's a big decision, as you must choose between winning, and the cost of winning.

There's no bugs that I've noticed. The game did not crash even once from all the hours of play of finishing the entire campaign (on easy mode), which is good. However, in the "End Game" final mission, the game resolution did NOT take into account the possibility of "mutual annihilation", thus rather "duh". I call that a design error, rather than a bug. Also, the gauss rifle appears to be a bit too powerful, as a few shots of those will take out any mech.

Overall, MW4 is a good intro to the Mechwarrior universe, but it's a big change from the previous MW's, and a lot of veterans will be yelling. I'm not certain those changes are good, but I can understand them. If you like your MW the old fashioned way, then MW4 may not be for you.

The Good
Technically, MW4 is an awesome experience. The graphics and sound are a huge step up from previous 'Mech games; experienced with a half-decent 3D card and a force feedback joystick, the your-are-thereness of the game is stunning. Smoke and lighting effects are excellent; the only oversight was the lack of persistent damage on landscape, but you can live with that. The maps provided are terrific, and Microsoft releases new ones every now and then.

MW4 is basically two games, the campaign game and the online multiplayer game. The online multiplayer game is one of the thinks I like about MW4; it's a load of fun. With sixteen 'mechs duking it out over a big map, you've got the potential for major combat fun, especially if your teammates display at least some level of cooperation and tactical knowledge. Online sessions are missile-launching, cannon-shooting explosion-creating fun at its best.

Mech design has also been changed, IMO vastly for the better. Previous Mech games made mech design essentially a pack-as-many-weapons-on-the-mech-as-you-can exercise, so that all mechs were more or less the same as other mechs of equal size. MW4 limits the type of weapons a mech can carry on each appendage, however, so some mechs are severely biased towards being missile duellers, while some are best suited for close-in whompfests, while others are better at carrying lasers. While thsi sort of limits mech design option, in a way it expands them. In previous games, a mech that didn't adopt the load-em-up-with-everything stretegy was overmatched, but MW4 rewards specialization and experimenting with mission profiles. This, of course, helps multiplayer immensely. Far better to have a team with a mix of scouts, missile mechs, brawlers and assault mechs and have to work as a team than just have everybody driving the same vehicle.

The Bad
MW4's main drawback is the campaign game, which is simply an uninteresting series of missions (and not that many of them.) The backstory is colossally stupid and totally irrelevant to anyone who doesn't much care about the intricacies of the Battletech universe. For what it's worth, you play a guy claiming his birthright (it's always about birthright in Mechwarrior) against a family called "Steiner." Fighting a bunch of "Steiners" over a jerkwater planet does not strike me as being a terribly interesting or epic conflict, or really fitting a game involving driving 100-ton robots into apocalyptic battles; it's like flying jet fighters in combat over the rights to a dry-cleaning business.

There is absolutely nothing different, innovative, or even remotely interesting about the campaign. Why they have not yet implemented an improved "mercenaries" single-player game is completely beyond me; it defies explanation.

The Bottom Line
Cruddy single-player, but the multiplayer's worth the price of the game twice over!

The Good
But I wouldn't really know since this is my first mech game! I was weaned on old-school adventures and first-person shooters. Anyway, the game is pretty good. Graphics are great, and damage is pretty realistic. The mechs are incredibly tough (as 100 ton metal monstrosities should be) and damage is shown well with smoke and sparks and stuff flying off the mech, and limbs getting shot off. One thing in the other reviews I noticed was griping about no limping. I'm not sure if it's the detail level or what, but the mechs limped for me! I think it has something to do with the tougher mechs in this game (but again, I wouldn't be the best to ask about that) since a leg must be destroyed before the mech limps. Terrain is very nice, houses, trees, just about anything can be blown to bits, but I can't shoot the people or the deer!

The Bad
It had a very high learning curve. The mechs (or is it mecha?) aren't very responsive, and getting the hang of the torso-twist took a while. If you haven't played earlier games in the series and don't want to have to learn new movement skills, and/or have a crappy joystick or one with out a twist axis, then you might want to pass on this game. Also, the acting was kinda cheesy, but I didn't really mind that too much. The biggest problem is that the sound effects are loud. My neighbors would complain if I turned up the game too much (thin walls), and if someone was talking (in the game or in real life) during a battle, I'd have a hard time hearing them.

The Bottom Line
A great game for those who are fans of the series, or who don't mind trying to get used to the controls.