Mech Commander

The Good
What Mech Commander essentially does is take turn-based BattleTech and transpose it into a simplified real-time form.

The 'Mech customization is the most positive aspect of this game. Any 'Mech can be used in a long-range support role or as a close-range heavy hitter. You can re-define your platoon's strategy between missions, or mix-and-match for cross-mission tactical feasibility. You will find that planning out a mission is just as essential as how the mission is actually played.

And this is one of few games for which I can say that replaying a mission is fun. In fact, you will replay missions multiple times to reduce damage done to your 'Mechs, to maximize your salvage, and to find efficient ways to do what the obvious path would turn into an arduous and closely-matched battle. It's not just about strategy; it's about re-defining your strategy after your first strategy either failed or narrowly succeeded.

For an isometric 2.5-D game, the graphics are surprisingly good; 'Mech limbs can be blown off; 'Mech and vehicle explosions are sufficiently gratifying; though the weapon graphics more or less fall into three categories (the 'missile' shared by SRMs and LRMs, the 'bolt' shared by Autocannons and lasers, and the PPC animation), the speed and color of these individual weapons are sufficient that you'll see a wide variety of fire being exchanged during battles, keeping them original and entertaining.

The landscapes are also beautifully produced and meticulously designed in spite of a very simple template of terrain. The missions interact almost seamlessly with the terrain in which they are presented; you are frequently presented with a choice to burn through a forest or take the paved road, and sometimes burning through exposes a path you didn't know existed, but other times, it's just a forest. As a result, there's a lot of experimentation involved with each mission.

The Bad
As a result, the game is also a lot less spontaneous. Since the success of every mission has some bearing upon how well you did on the mission before it, you will usually end up making a 'dry run' of a mission in which you expose all the ambushes and terrain surprises, then replay the mission so the surprises are either evaded entirely or met with blunt force.

The game also inadvertently encourages loading out your 'Mechs with all Long and Medium range weaponry. Since the enemy force typically comes at you one little piece at a time, you get into the habit of packing all of your 'Mechs with the weapons necessary to break apart individual enemies before they can make a first or second shot. Even if the enemy gets into close range with one of your 'Mechs, this only forces your other 'Mechs to move back and surround the enemy with continued long and medium range barrages.

The necessity to salvage Heavy Clan 'Mechs early in the game, especially the Mad Cat in the third mission, means that you'll be replaying certain missions over and over again just to make the salvage. It feels arbitrary to kill something in the same way ten times just so that on the eleventh try you will be able to use it in the next mission. Don't even get me started on trying to salvage something with its valuable weapons intact.

If you're a die-hard BattleTech geek, you'll notice that the customization rules are hardly up to CBT (Classic BattleTech) standards. Though you can come up with 'Mech payloads which would be horribly illegal in CBT, you still can't customize ammo, and since your AI pilots don't understand why Gauss ammo should be saved for 'Mechs and not wasted on Savannah Masters, you will find yourself replacing those heavy, ammo-light weapons with energy weapons. It's too frustrating to deal with ammo when the pilots don't know how to conserve it, which is one of the biggest failings of a game built on directing AI.

There's one particularly frustrating bug in this game: Enemy gates will open for the enemies crowding around them, allowing your 'Mechs to enter. But once you've killed the enemies, the gate closes - sometimes on one of your 'Mechs, which kills it instantly.

The Bottom Line
This game is great for BattleTech fans, refreshing for MechWarrior fans, and very fun for RTS fans. For anybody else, it doesn't exactly have the pace of an FPS and not enough open-ended potential to count as an RPG. But I had a lot of fun with this title, and enjoyed it all the way up to the end credits.