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From: Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Ooh! Mechwarrior 5: The Clans is Out
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2024 22:45:25 -0400
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 04:07:34 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
>>entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
>>say:
>>
>>>On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 05:56:38 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I've got Mech5:Mercs.  I love it, but it's a bit repetitive after a while and
>>>>>I'm starting to lose interest.  I haven't purchased any of the DLCs and am
>>>>>only about 10 missions in.
>>>
>>>>I should have looked at my steam library before posting.
>>>>
>>>>What I have is mech5:mercs not mech5 basic.
>>>
>>>Mostly because there was no "Mech 5 Basic". 
>>>
>>>On PC, the Mechwarrior franchise included: 
>>>   Mechwarrior 1
>>>   Mechwarrior 2 (with MW2: Ghost Bear's Legacy and MW2: Mercenaries) 
>>>   Mechwarrior 3 (with MW3: Pirates Moon) 
>>>   Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance (and MW 4: Mercenaries)
>>>   (Living Legends, unofficial)
>>
>>You forgot MW4: Black Knight
>>
>>>   Mechwarrior: Online
>>>   Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries 
>>>     and now 
>>>   Mechwarrior 5: Clans
>>>
>>>Because MW5:Mercenaries was, for the last 5 years, the _only_
>>>Mechwarrior 5 game, the 'Mercenaries' subtitle was often dropped. So
>>>you'll hear people talking about "Mechwarrior 5" but what they really
>>>mean is "Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries"
>>>
>>>MW5:Mercs isn't a bad game. I enjoyed it enough to not only play it
>>>multiple times, but buy a bunch of the DLC. But -as mentioned by
>>>others- it does get fairly repetitive, and the AI is significantly
>>>lacking. 
>>>
>>>The maps are re-used a lot and a lot of the procedurally-generated
>>>missions (which form the bulk of your adventures as a mercenary) are
>>>identical other than a reshuffling of what enemies you face. The
>>>brain-dead AI has the enemies run right into your fire (no attempt to
>>>flank or try to take you out from afar), and the developers are forced
>>>to rely on numbers rather than smarts to provide challenge. Too many
>>>missions require my tiny four-men squad take out literal dozens of
>>>bad-guys. It's tedious, and goes against the tone of the setting,
>>>where expensive battlemechs are never tossed away so haphazardly.
>>>
>>>"Clans" apparently (or so claim the reviews) improves on the former,
>>>as its single-player campaign features mostly hand-crafted missions.
>>>But it's still not clear whether the AI has improved any.
>>>
>>>Still, damn if I'm not tempted to buy the game already rather than
>>>wait for it to drop in price (and get all the bugs and kinks worked
>>>out). I just love me some rompy-stompy robots!
>>
>>Yeah, the MW ones, the "gears" of Heavy Gear 1+2, and another one I
>>vaguely recall called Slave Zero.
>
>Slave Zero was a very different game; it was really more of a
>third-person shooter that just happened to feature a Kaiju-sized
>robot* as its protagonist. It was fun, but so different in tone and
>style as to be more akin to an FPS than a proper 'mech game'.
>
>But there were a bunch of similar titles; the aforementioned "Heavy
>Gear" games -made by Activision after they lost the Mechwarrior
>license- but also titles like the Front Mission and Armored Core games
>(originally just for Playstation but migrating later to PC), titles
>like "Gunmetal" (although that was more of a shooter), "Ultrabots",
>the Gungriffon titles, Looking Glass' excellent "Terra Nova", "Metal
>Fatigue", the Earthsiege games, "Iron Assault", Bioware's forgotten
>"Shattered Steel", Monolith's "Shogo" (that was more of an FPS
>though), "Krazy Ivan" (again, more shooter than sim) and probably more
>than I'm just not remembering at the moment.

Of all of those I only played Terra Nova and Metaltech:Earthsiege 1+2,
because those were I think actually designed for PC, not a bad, controls
limited console port - I stayed well the fuck away from those.

>    [Oh, like the Strike Suit Zero games! Although those were 
>     more swoopy-zoopy-shooty robots in space]
>
>But the Mechwarrior games remain the grand-daddy of them all, and
>-IMHO- the best of the bunch.

Earthsiege and Heavy Gear had their points (loved the mix 'n' match
parts ability in Heavy Gear.)

>Warning: Resistance levels to buying MW5:Clans at 52% and falling...

Stay strong Spalls, stay strong!

>* technically, a biomechanical creature telepathically puppeted by an
>offsite operator 

Big thunderous stomps through the city, the control system is
irrelevant, STOMPY! STOMPY!

Xocyll