MechWarrior 4: Vengeance

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!