Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>UK retailer Gamesplanet is running a medieval and strategy sale in honour of their 15th anniversary, including a pretty outstanding offer - get the excellent Viking strategy game Northgard for free when you spend more than £3.50 and use code NORSEGODS. There's plenty discounted in the sale too, including some of the best PC strategy games ever made, so take a look!
]]>Paradox Insider takes place tonight and will broadcast live on Twitch at 11am PT/7pm GMT/8pm CET. This is where Paradox Interactive reveal new information about games and updates they're planning on releasing in 2021. Will there be new information on Bloodlines 2? I doubt it, but you can watch the stream below to find out.
]]>Strategy games is an enormous genre in PC gaming, with real-time, turn-based, 4X and tactics games all flying the same flag to stake their claim as the one true best strategy game. Our list of the best strategy games on PC covers the lot of them. We like to take a broad view here at RPS, and every game listed below is something we firmly believe that you could love and play today. You'll find 30-year-old classics nestled right up against recent favourites here, so whether you're to the genre or want to dig deep for some hidden gems, we've got you covered. Here are our 50 best strategy games for 2023.
]]>Paradox Interactive are pitching in on Covid-19 coronavirus relief efforts with a sale on several of their big management games and RPGs until Friday, April 3rd. You can snag some mighty hefty discounts on things like Cities: Skylines, Pillars Of Eternity, and BattleTech. Paradox are committing proceeds from the sale to the World Health Organization's Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
]]>After three expansions and almost two years, BattleTech is just about done. The developers, Harebrained Schemes say they have one last free update due later this month February then that's the end of their current plans for the turn-based tactical mech 'em up. After this, they're focusing on making two new projects. Mysterious, non-BattleTech projects. Could it be the Crimson Skies some long for?
]]>Here we stand in the dark neo-year of 2020. The spam bots have risen to prominence, the governments of the world are bickering over follower counts, and history class has been renamed "meme studies". Somewhere, in a dusty room in the RPS treehouse, a rogue human is compiling a list article for a crumbling PC games website. It is a warning to all those who read it. A prophecy of the terrible things to come. Wars, invasions, disease, heat death. Videogames, it turns out, have predicted all this and more. Here we replicate this cautionary pre-chronicle, your guide to the harrowing times ahead. Here are the 11 worst years in our future history, according to games.
]]>Mech love, not war. That is the lesson we must learn from the futuristic prophecies of the MechWarrior games. Yes, it is very noble to slam your big steel shoes upon a separatist’s bedroom, and to laser him in the head. But would it not bring greater valour, greater unity, greater enlightenment, if those same 65-ton brogues were used … to dance!
No. Here is a list of the 9 stompiest mechs in PC games. The heaviest, most murderous machines we know and trust with our frail human bods. But are they are all good at squashing?
]]>Are y'all ready for some deals? With Black Friday almost upon us and only a few weeks since the last big Steam sale, of course it's time for some deals. Steam's Autumn Sale kicked off today, dealing out discounts and delights until the shutters close next Tuesday. You can check out the full list of discounted games on Steam here. Blimey, there's a few of them. Over 13,000 of them.
Tell you what, I'll give you a couple of recommendations to get started.
]]>BattleTech's expansions have been a little light on new murderbots. Flashpoint brought in new multi-stage missions and Urban Warfare took the fighting to city streets, but this week's Heavy Metal DLC is all about those mechs. BattleTech's third (and final, for now) DLC drops with seven classics alongside the bespoke new Bullshark, accompanied by enough new lasers, missiles and mortars to turn even the biggest steel titan into a smoking scrapheap.
]]>The next expansion for BattleTech will bring new mechs and characters from its tabletop days as well as new weapons, Paradox announced today at their PDXCON fanfest. Heavy Metal is the expansion's name, and adding more dirty gert lumps of metal is its name. Our boy Nate, who is out at PDXCON in Berlin, tells me one of the new weapons coming in Heavy Metal "Reminded [him] of the tiny 'Noisy Cricket' gun in Men In Black." As well as new ways to murder robots, it'll have new story reasons to do it, with a new Flashpoint "mini-campaign" featuring ye olde folks from Wolf's Dragoons.
]]>A second visit from the deals herald in a single day? Well, I never. It's for good reason, though, as Humble have just announced that October's Humble Monthly bundle will be headlined by none other than the stompy mech strategy titan, Battletech. Our Alec (RPS in peace) grew to be quite fond of Battletech when it first came out last year, so much so that he went and plonked it straight into our 50 Best Strategy Games hall of fame. You'll need to be a Humble Monthly subscriber to get it, of course, but if you're not you can join up right now for just $12 a month.
]]>“If I had asked people what they wanted,” father of the assembly line and horrible anti-semite Henry Ford supposedly said, “they would have said faster horses.” As cool as nitrous-enabled horses sound, I think old Hitler-fancier Ford was trying to insinuate that the masses can’t imagine the next technological revolution; they can only think of a better version of what they’ve got.
Maybe that’s why we as a species are so stuck on the concept of mechs: if we think about future warfare, all we can imagine is “BIGGER PEOPLE!”
]]>Stompybot squad management sim Batteltech was great, but it was clearly missing something. Not so today, with the release of the Urban Warfare expansion, second of three planned for the squad tactics game's season pass. No longer limited to rolling hills, mountains and military bases, this expansion adds the future cityscapes of other 'Mech games. While developed by Harebrained Schemes, this is also a Paradox joint, which means even if you don't buy in, you've got a massive feature-heavy free update to dig into. Below, a launch trailer and some gritty details.
]]>BattleTech is letting folks channel their inner Godzillas on June 4th with its second expansion, Urban Warfare. Its biggest addition is a new and deliciously destructible set of city environments, with rooftops to jump-jet onto or embarrassingly fall off. As expected, there will also be a pair of new 'Mech types, a set of new smaller vehicles (including cars to step on, though I don't think they count), and an all-new mission type. There'll also be some new story-based Flashpoints, building on the previous expansion's big new system. See the announcement trailer below.
]]>Lovely as it was, Harebrained Schemes's BattleTech felt like it trimmed back many of the tabletop game's wilder elements. RogueTech, a messy compilation of mods organised by "LadyAlekto" and crew, reinstates these complex rules and lets you bolt just about anything onto your big stompy bots up to and including the contents of the kitchen sink. If riding a clattering, improvised pirate 'Mech into battle with a hot-rod engine and a Gauss shotgun loaded with silverware appeals, this mod is for you. Just don't expect the galaxy to play fair, or make much sense.
There's no story to RogueTech beyond the one you write, no goals past the ones you set and no coherent canon. It just gives you a big messy galaxy full of mercenary contracts, and the looming threat of bankruptcy if you don't play your cards right. You'll probably die horribly, but you'll come away with some fun tales to tell. Below, three stories of my own attempts to lead a squad through missions and gain a foothold, plus a quick guide to how to install and play the mod yourself.
]]>The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it's time to recycle the cardboard. Below you'll find all of our favourite games from 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.
]]>Flashpoint, the first expansion for wonkily-explained, slow-burn stomp-o-strategy gem BattleTech, does exactly what I wanted it to: gives me a cast-iron reason to keep playing indefinitely.
]]>Lasers are nice, but if anime has taught me anything, all you need a blade the size of a truck. Released today, Flashpoint is the first of three planned expansions for Harebrained Scheme's stompybot mercenary manager Battletech. There's three new mechs (including the melee-loving Hatchetman above), a new mission type geared towards lighter mechs, sunny tropical planets and a major extension to the post-story endgame. The titular flashpoints are a set of mercenary mini campaigns with decisions to be made, and potentially big rewards. Plus, a huge new patch is out.
]]>Even before its recent public gameplay unveiling, Cyberpunk 2077 was the target of a very particular piece of criticism. Perhaps sparked by the transphobic joke made by the game's Twitter account, many online have been calling out 2077 for presenting yet another future that, despite its overt themes of transhumanism and body modification, falls strictly into the gender binary. Despite the gender diversity already prevalent in our own world and time, players in 2077 are asked to choose between a strictly male or female character. Many online have been saying that this is at odds with the very genre from which the game gets its name and ideas. “Cyberpunk shouldn't be cis!” is more or less the argument. This criticism has dogged the game for weeks now and will probably follow it all the way to release. Yet it doesn't quite ring true to me.
]]>The first expansion for BattleTech will arrive in November, publishers Paradox announced today, with a new type of story mission chain and new mechs including... wait, this mech carries an axe to chop other mechs to pieces? Hatchetman, I want you. Come meet this robolad and his huge chopper in the trailer below. Oh, and learn about those new missions and mechs and whatnot for the turn-based strategy game too I suppose. But mostly axe.
]]>We're just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we've shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you're reading right now this second.
And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn't make the cut this time.
]]>Turn-based giant mech argy-bargy BattleTech doesn't officially support mods, but it doesn't officially not support mods either. Though we're denied the ease of clicking a 'subscribe' icon in the Steam Workshop, that ol'Nexus is littered with smart and ridiculous remixes of BattleTech's ten-storey war songs. For the time being, most aesthetic overhauls are ruled out - a great shame, as I'd love to see more diversity of planet and to field a few more luridly hot pink mechs - but digging into the files that control the rules, flow, camera and even the structure of the campaign and missions is not.
I found myself a little directionless after beating the main missions, but wanted a good excuse to start over without repeating myself. Thanks to the below mods - just a few selected highlights from the growing mass of 'em - it's almost a brand new game.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>BattleTech might have stomped its way straight onto the turn-based mech combat throne, but while its central torso was strong and mighty, its outer armour sported a few noticeable holes. We'd been promised a patch that would introduce speed-up options for those who crave 'em (hello!), along with tackling its weirdly greedy GPU needs and adding new difficulty toggles for battle-scarred veterans who can blow through the campaign with their battle-scarred eyes closed.
Well, it's here now. BattleTech v1.1 does a lot more than that, and the game feels and runs so much better for it, as well as providing me with a bunch of strong reasons to start a brand new campaign. That said, I'm not totally enamoured by exactly how they've implemented the speed toggles.
]]>Paradox Interactive have announced they are buying Harebrained Schemes, expanding their power as the heavyweight champ of traditional PC gaming. Y'know, Paradox, the Swedish mob who make games including Crusader Kings II and Stellaris as well as publishing loads more. And y'know, Harebrained Schemes, the American studio behind Shadowrun and BattleTech - and which was co-founded by a fella who helped create those tabletop worlds, Jordan Weisman. Paradox published BattleTech and evidently they got on so well they want to tie the knot. It sounds like the plan is for Harebrained to continue as before, including making more BattleTech, only now with more security.
]]>I've been on something of an emotional journey with Harebrained Schemes' turn-based mech combat game, BattleTech. I was turned off by its unusually slow animation speeds and drawn-out wars of attrition during my first dozen-odd hours of play, but a combination of speed-up mods and deepening understanding of rules the game itself did not take the time to explain saw me fall ever-deeper in love with it. Many people, especially fans of its tabletop source material, adored BattleTech from the get-go, but others expressed similar concerns to me about its pacing - and soon enough the developers announced that their forthcoming first major update would offer new, official speed-tweaking options.
So, I bounced a few questions off BattleTech game director Mike McCain and ended up with some candid answers about exactly what we can expect from those options, the original design intentions behind the game's languid pace, how the team feel about it being altered by mods and why they'd "love to improve on" how BattleTech currently explains how to best take down a giant killing machine.
]]>Stompy-bot management sim BattleTech may not technically have native mod support, but developers Harebrained Schemes aren't so proud as to keep all their data under lock and key. Realising that folks would want to poke around inside the guts of their latest game, they left much of its file structure open and human-editable.
One of the nicer little mods to come from this is Unlock Full Map After Obtaining The Argo, which is a very boring name but does just what it says on the tin. Ideal for the mercenary captain that would rather leave the main story behind and go freelance for a while.
]]>The dadification of games continues. So we’re going full Dad this week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, as we’ve been asked to talk about the games we play with our children.
Alec’s daughter is excited by the unlockable characters in Rayman Legends (and she’s also strangely fascinated by Battletech). John’s son is a bit younger and likes to watch his dad diving in Abzu and Subnautica (but also manages to sneak glimpses of God of War’s quiet moments on the TV – naughty!). Brendan doesn’t have children, only a cat. She can’t stand games and thinks they are a waste of time.
]]>Hullo! John is preoccupied with wizards right now, so I'm taking over for the rundown of last week's top ten on Steam. It was an interesting week, bringing back some welcome old games and slamming in some shiny new ones. Largely, it's all about robots and survival.
]]>Some might say that BattleTech's meta-game is the strategy layer - all that base-building, mech-fixing'n'fitting, pilot management and parts-shopping required to ultimately create an unstoppable army of heavy metal death. Those people are dead wrong. The overarching goal of BattleTech, the true purpose of its turn-based fights and base management alike, is that you gotta catch 'em all.
By which I mean, you gotta kneecap 'em all.
]]>Bad news for people who love it when I bang on about BattleTech's speed/delay problems every single time I post about it: the devs are planning to offer "accelerated combat options" in a month or two. More unit customisation, difficulty settings and UI improvements are also due in the first major update, though ahead of that, they'll be breaking out their welding torches and fixing up this thing's slightly unstable legs.
]]>Two things stand between BattleTech and true greatness. User guides and videos solve the bonkers decision to not so much as hint at absolute combat necessities that make the difference between grim slugfest and satisfying tactical supremacy, but the other one's trickier.
The surfeit of frustrating pauses and pretty but time-wasting animations surely require an official patch, right? Nope - turns out that all you need to haul BattleTech out of the quicksand is a spot of ini file editing. The difference is... well, I don't want to let my prose get too purple here, but it's so much closer to the turn-based mech combat game I'd long dreamed of.
]]>As I drag my groggy-faced body to the monitor at 6.30 each Monday morning, I click the bookmark for my Steam Charts RSS and scrunch up my face so my forehead and nose curl over my eyes. How bad will it be? How familiar will the list of five-year-old games be? How will I think of... BUT WHAT IS THIS?!!?! FOUR new entries! Far Cry 5 taking up only one slot! No Witcher 3! No Skyrim! It's like Christmas, where Christmas is a day you just about get through without things being as bad as they were last year.
]]>A couple of days ago, I started BattleTech's campaign over from the start. For uninteresting technical reasons I'd had to use a different Steam account when playing it for our BattleTech review, but the savegames wouldn't then load on my usual account. I'd been fairly frustrated by the turn-based mech combat game's treacly pace and janky interface, and so didn't intend on this do-over lasting long. As it happened, I played until I reached where I'd left off in my previous campaign.
It took half the time it had done before, and my blood rarely reached the tempestuous boil that had characterised my broadly unimpressed pre-release experience. And then I kept on playing. I have no current intention of stopping. I am enjoying myself immensely, mostly. BattleTech's failings very much remain failings, but they're not the obstacle to happy bot-blasting that they once were. So what changed?
]]>Perhaps ~~you’re~~ the robot? Did you ever think of that, huh? No, it’s fine, you’re a human, a human who likes the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, we're chatting about our favourite mechanoids, cyberfolk and rust-buckets. Alec likes the robo-ostrich from World of Warcraft, a bird capable of great speed (and good for showing off). Brendan is fond of the abandoned bots of Hackmud, and their tragicomic existence on a humanless earth. Meanwhile, John loves little BUD of Grow Home and his wobbly walking animations.
Speaking of large, bi-pedal machines, we've also been playing strategy mech-em-up Battletech. Well, Alec has. He's been stomping around, slowly firing missiles. But is it any good?
]]>In my BattleTech review yesterday, I focused on the ways in which Harebrained Schemes' long-awaited boardgame adaptation sadly wasn't the big 'bots at war experience I'd hoped for, but I want to go into more detail about why, as I put it, "I don’t think that redemption is impossible." The tactical core of BattleTech's fights is fascinating, compelling and uniquely mech-y, even if the glacial pacing and drab presentation drove me spare.
]]>Update: though the below complaints stand, my feelings about Battletech's tactical core have become significantly more positive as a result of continuing to play it following publication of this review.
I was perplexed to discover that my partner, also a home-worker, was wearing earplugs as she sat at her computer. There was, for once, none of the thunderous din of new kitchens or loft extensions being built in one of the adjacent terraced houses, and nor was my own PC's volume set high as I threw stompy tankbots at each other in XCOM-meets-Mechwarrior turn-based strategy game/boardgame adaptation BattleTech. Stony-faced, she informed me that listening to me sporadically bellow "Oh god, it's so boring" every few minutes is not terribly conducive to work. I didn't even know I was doing it.
I don't like calling things boring. It's an aggressively dismissive criticism, and often says as much about the accuser as the accused. I've returned to BattleTech repeatedly, in different moods and with absolute determination to find the fun in a game made from components I usually thrill to, but I keep winding up in the same place: bored. And then hating myself for feeling that way.
]]>Oh no. Somebody sound the “journalists discussing journalism” klaxon. Rattle it as loudly and furiously as possible, because the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is talking about how being a critic changes the way we play. Don’t blame us, blame listener Aleksei, who sent in the theme as a suggestion. But please also forgive Adam, because it’s his last showing on the podcast (he’s leaving RPS next week) so he deserves a bit of self-indulgence.
]]>The summer of Mech, they'll call this in years to come, when they've stopped caring about strict definitions of when a season is. Later this month we get Harebrained Schemes' healthily-Kickstarted XCOM-meets-Mechwarrior affair Battletech, and then towards the end of 2018 we return to a first-person, real-time view of that big, stompy world, with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries.
It's a bit of an unknown quantity right now, given devs Piranha Games' last crack of the ambulatory tanks whip was 2012's unlovely (but still live) MechWarrior Online. MW5 will return the series to its singleplayer roots, and its latest attempt to win back the hearts of jaded MW fans is to show us how much stuff we get to smash, stomp, crush, bash, decimate and so forth.
]]>Whirr-stomp. That's the noise a big stompy mech makes as it patrols the battlefield. It's entirely dissimilar to the pitter-patter my heart makes when I finally see a release date for BattleTech, the turn-based tactical MechWarrior game from Harebrained Schemes and Paradox. I've been waiting for this one for a long time - not just the years it's actually been in development, but the preceding decades when the world stubbornly refused to give me a BattleTech game that didn't strap me into the cockpit rather than letting me do what I do best: backseat drive, well out of harm's way.
BattleTech, with its splendid combat and intriguing merc-management campaign, will be out on April 24th.
]]>BattleTech is the game in which giant mechs punch each other until their limbs fall off and the pilots inside those mechs boil to death. It's out next month and I'm very excited, having already spent quite a lot of time stomping about in superb turn-based skirmishes. It looks great, it plays great, all is well. Except...what about the dynamic campaign? Will it have enough menus and financial reports to really make my heart sing?
Clashes between clans in control of hulking great war machines are all well and good, but I'm here for the cashflow as well as the combat. I'm very pleased that the latest video to emerge shows lots of menus, as well as random events like pilots getting into punch-ups, bored during the long-haul trips from one planet to the next. It really is a mech management game underneath all that shiny chrome and delicious scrapping. Praise be.
]]>The turn-based tactical MechWarrior-o-rama BattleTech will launch in April, publishers Paradox announced today. When in April? That'd be telling. But at some point. Our Adam called it "the mech game I've always wanted" when he played a preview version almost a year ago, so it's nice we'll soon get to see what the robofuss is about. We'll have to mech up for lost time. Mech. MECH. MAKE. On the subject of explaining things, a new video series has started with some Harebrained Schemes fellas (including BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman) explaining a bit about how the game works:
]]>As we lay 2017 to rest, let us remember all of the wonderful games that flickered across our screens and occupied our hearts and minds. But now we must promise never to think of them again because times have changed. This is 2018 and if we've learned one thing from the few hours we've spent in it it's that there are games everywhere. Every firework that exploded in the many midnights of New Year's celebrations was stuffed with games and they were still raining down across the world this morning. We cannot stop them, we cannot contain them, but we can attempt to understand them.
Hundreds of them will be worth our time and attention, but we've selected a few of the ones that excite us most as we prepare for another year of splendid PC gaming. There's something for everyone, from Aunt Maude, the military genius, to merry Ian Rogue, the man who hates permadeath and procedural generation with a passion.
]]>What do you mean there's a whole month of 2017 left? Well, the disembodied mouths of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, are tired of waiting. This week the team look at some of the most exciting upcoming games of 2018. Adam is looking forward to smashing big robots with other, bigger robots in Battletech. Matt wants to make trousers from dinosaur skin in Monster Hunter World. And Brendan forgot all about how much he's excited by surreal isometric detective game No Truce With The Furies.
We've also got some chat about Viking strategy game Northgard and yet more love for FTL follow-up Into The Breach. Plus, our Patch Adam quiz is back!
]]>It's odd to think of Mickey Mouse while ordering a giant robot to rip another robot's arms off, but in the words of its creator Jordan Weisman, Battletech is kind of like Walt Disney's Tomorrowland. Opened in 1955, the park was an homage to the march of science that inevitably struggled to keep up. Its present-day incarnations are a bizarre mishmash of the vintage, the cutting edge and the merely obsolete, Flash Gordon-brand retro colliding with touchscreens and VR. Similarly, Battletech is a vision of human history up to the 31st century that began life as a table-top strategy game in 1984, made up of once-outlandish concepts such as artificial muscles that now seem positively quaint.
The series wears its age more gracefully than Tomorrowland, however, because its campaign is as much about obsolescence and forgetfulness as the far future – a re-imagining of the fall of the Roman Empire and ensuing “dark age” that rebuts the concept of history as a steady, linear advance. It's a solid footing for a strategy sim in the vein of Total War, comparable to Warhammer 40K's Imperium but less, well, preposterous, though I still think the turn-based battle system Adam sampled in June is Battletech's strongest asset.
]]>The turn-based tactical BattleTech [official site] "is the mech game I've always wanted", our Adam declared after playing a bit. "It's likely to be one of my favourite games of 2017," he said. Well then. Let's blame him for flipping well jinxing it, as BattleTech is now delayed. It was due later this year but is instead now pushed into some time in "early 2018". Why the delay? The people making BattleTech -- Shadowrun Returns devs Harebrained Schemes -- say it's to make the game good, yeah?
]]>BattleTech [official site] finally brings mechs and mercs back to their turn-based tactical roots, and if the combat is backed by a worthy campaign mode, it's likely to be one of my favourite games of 2017. I've only played the skirmish mode, against AI opponents, so I can't assess the quality of the campaign. But the actual mech clashes are absolutely glorious, and as spectacular as any turn-based battles I've ever seen.
]]>At the Paradox Convention 2017, the strategy game developer/publisher announced that they would be working with Harebrained Schemes as publisher of Battletech, the turn-based squad level tactical mech game that was an instant Kickstarter success in 2015. We've already spoken to the developers in-depth but this weekend will be our first chance to play, and I'll be speaking to BattleTech creator Jordan Weisman about the collaboration with Paradox and the game itself.
]]>There is no shortage of classic MechWarrior games for PC. MechWarrior 2 was one of the defining 3D action games of the 90s, and MechCommander remains a beloved tactical game among the people who remember it. But you could argue that there's never been a real BattleTech game, one that faithfully recreated both the tabletop tactical games and the kind of warfare portrayed in in the sourcebooks. The PC games set in the MechWarrior universe all had to make drastic departures.
Now, over thirty years after he created BattleTech, Jordan Weisman is finally getting around to making a PC wargame that does it justice. After successfully reviving the Shadowrun franchise on PC, his company has brought BattleTech to Kickstarter. It's a descended from the boardgame in ways that the other PC MechWarrior games never could be. I spoke to Weisman about why things would be different this time.
]]>Edit: now at over $800k after less than a day. Lawks!
BattleTech is/was the setting for the beloved MechWarrior series, but began life as a 1984 tabletop wargame, long before it was a mech combat sim. Though MechWarrior pops up again now and then (usually involving some tortured development process), the BattleTech name itself didn't get a whole lot of use when it came to videogames - although Command & Conquer creators Westwood had a go at one. But now it's getting its first non-spun-off time in the PC gaming sun since 1994, as a new turn-based mech tactics game being developed by Harebrained Schemes, of Shadowrun Returns fame.
BattleTech reached its $250,000 Kickstarter goal within around an hour of announcement. Blimey. However, the game won't have a singleplayer campaign unless it reaches one million dollars. Wait, what?
]]>Shadowrun has enjoyed a triumphant return and after the superb Dragonfall, I'm as excited about the the upcoming trip to Hong Kong as I am about almost any other game coming up in the second half of the year. Harebrained Schemes love a good return though and now they're preparing to help another series step back into the limelight.
BattleTech is back. Or at least it will be if an upcoming Kickstarter is successful. Details below.
]]>Blue has noticed that there have been some rumblings from Pirhana Games about their new Mechwarrior game. An announcement announcement! There's already a bit of information on their site, including this: "Gamers will pilot a deadly BattleMech and use information warfare to dominate a dynamic-destructive urban battlefield. The game features include classic and new mechs from the BattleTech universe with persistent character development and plans for a single player campaign, as well as, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay." You apparently play "a wayward nobleman" who ends up with a motive for revenge when his family are killed during a planetary invasion.
Worringly the site also runs with the headline "Not Your Father’s MechWarrior" which makes me sad because I am my own father. That said, the CG teaser which we first posted a couple of years ago (below) does look promising, and seems to get the plodding weapon-blastiness that is Mechwarrior.
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