MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries and BattleTech launching in the same year was obviously just too much mech for this world. The latter came out in April, giving us control over a bunch of planet-hopping mercs, but its first-person cousin, originally slated for December this year, is now stomp stomp stomping its way into 2019.
]]>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.
]]>Those rock 'em sock 'em rompin' stompin' MechWarriors will return in 2018 with an actual proper MechWarrior game what does the good stuff I want. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries [official site] will be a singleplayer game with a campaign mode about fighting robots for money. It's being made by Piranha Games, the folks behind the free-to-play multiplayer MechWarrior Online. They announced the game over the weekend and have also shared a smidgen of gameplay footage, which includes a rude chickenbot and roboeggs raining from the skies. Watch:
]]>Titanfall 2 is smashing for zip-zap-zippy-zoopy mech action but what if you fancy your deathbots more serious, more simmy? Good news: MechWarrior: Living Legends is back. Creators Wandering Samurai Studios officially stopped working on the free game in 2013 but a group of players have since picked it up, and last week released their first new version. Their MWLL Community Edition v0.8 mostly fixes and tweaks things -- a lot of things -- but the team plan to add new content in future updates. It's free so hey, come on down and get stompy.
]]>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?
]]>Yesterday, the chug of a guitar echoed around RPS as a mech made a drop into enemy territory. Today, more mechs and from the same universe, but these ones are a great deal quieter because they exist in the frozen screenshots of Mechwarrior Tactics. Perhaps as you look at the hex-based battles you'll be inclined to play raucous music from your personal collection. That is your choice and although I'd suggest something of a more baroque nature to accompany tactical cognition, do not feel compelled to follow my lead. Click to make 'em mech-sized. Or at least a bit bigger.
]]>Now that I've shoe-horned it into the headline, it'd be doubly embarassing if my mechognition skills were a bit off. I think you'll find that the handsome chap below is an Atlas though, performing a hot drop in the first Mechwarrior Online video. It doesn't actually show the game being played, that would be far too useful, so instead of discussing the finer points of the interface and damage modelling, we'll have to spend our time dissecting the canonical correctitude of what we're being shown. Ready?
]]>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.
]]>Well, triple resurrections, if you also include the upcoming sequel/relaunch. For the purposes of this post though, it's vintage Mechwarring. Not been able to try this myself yet - mainly due to the torturously slow proprietary bitorrent client necessary to download the thing - but there's a whole lot afoot in Mechwarrior land. First, a major new version of a free remake of Mechwarrior 2 made in Blitzbasic. It's called Assault Tech 1: Battletech. Tech tech? Tech. Tech! Apparently, it now looks better than the original, thanks to a revamped DirectX7 engine. Oh, mighty seven. Decide for yourself in the videos below. As an additional ray of robotic rapture, the MW fan/mod site behind AT1:BT, MekTek.net, are also gearing up to re-release the rather splendid Mechwarrior 4, in its DRM-free, modern-Windowsed entirety.
]]>It's back after a seven year hiatus. IGN has the full scoop, and they report that developers Piranha Games have some ambitious plans, including 4-player co-op. They're also going to try and make the full range of mechs significant within the game via recon and intelligence missions: "it's not just a race to the heaviest, most powerful mechs. The designers want to reward you for picking a mech and sticking with it -- you will gain experience and become better at piloting your chosen mech, and that will translate into better accuracy and damage with weapon systems. This way, a player could specialize in a light mech throughout the entire game if they choose. It also means there are multiple playthroughs with different mechs." No release date as yet.
Lengthy CG -but-clearly-target trailer below.
]]>Fans of large metal things stepping on smaller things will be disappointed to hear that FASA Studios have shut their doors. Reportedly half of the team are being moved into the rest of Microsoft Studios. The other half move to the pub, nursing pints and considering what they plan to do next. We wish them luck with whatever it is. FASA, even in their modern post-MS buyout form of Studios, rather than their older Interactive, made some pretty neat games.
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