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Mech Commander
Fasa Interactive
Real-Time Strategy
REQUIREMENTS:
Quintin Stone
If you are expecting the typical Real-Time Strategy game when you play Mech Commander, let me cure of that misconception right away. Your job in this game is not to build a base, not to scramble for resources, and not to crank out an army to overrun the enemy with incredible numbers of units. Mech Commander is, instead, more like the "inside" levels of C&C: Red Alert and StarCraft, where you have a set number of units at the beginning of the level and you must complete a specific objective. The difference, though, is that you can customize your 'Mechs before and after each mission, choose which ones you want to bring with you, and buy, sell, and scavenge equipment.
For those of you familiar with the Battletech universe, you should feel more or less at home here. Sort of. There's no "Heat" in this game, so no heat sinks to worry about. Each weapon has a specific firing rate that indicates the delay between each shot. This is just fine with me... I was always the guy suffering from ammo detonation because of too much heat (especially on Battletech MUSE). You can't bulk up on ammunition for a weapon, because you can't purchase or add just ammo.
But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. There are some good points to this game. I'm always fond of graphical detail, and this game has it. The mechs are fairly easy to distinguish, even though the look of a mech may not accurately portray its (modified) weapon payload. Little trees crash to the ground as you run through them, bushes collapses beneath your mammoth steel feet. Severed robotic arms and legs litter the battlefield after a skirmish. The detail in the buildings is very well done, especially the mansions and headquarters when you destroy them and set them ablaze. Despite all of the bad points of Mech Commander, I actually had a lot of fun playing this game. It's just too bad there are so many problems that detract from it.
The hardest thing to get used to is the lack of control over your mechs. The weapons on a battlemech are a diverse lot, some mechs having half a dozen or more different types. This is because each one plays a different role in combat (some for short range, some for long, missiles for firing over obstacles, etc.) Your pilot AI has no grasp of any of these concepts. You can, through the interface, give a pilot the order to attack a target from long, medium, or short range, but you have no control over the type of weapon they choose to do that with. If you wanted to conserve your missiles, you're pretty much SOL, especially considering how limited your supply is. It's near impossible to stop your pilots from firing every weapon they have available at a very weak or damaged target. Considering your only chance at actually beating the game is to incapacitate, not destroy, enemy mechs so you can capture them, you'd think there'd be an easy way to tell your pilots to tone down their attacks. But their isn't. The option to target different body parts (such as the head, for a quick, clean, profitable kill) doesn't seem to actually do anything. This presents a real problem, because most people will tell you that unless you can manage to capture the MadCat on one of the first few levels, you don't stand a chance at beating the game. It's not fun playing that same level a dozen times, trying not to obliterate the MadCat each time after destroying all the other targets first. (And I can't for the life of me figure out why you can salvage downed mechs after defeating them in combat, but you can't capture the pristine, unpiloted mechs that you encounter so often in the game. Can anyone explain that to me?)
The actual game engine leaves something to be desired. Pathfinding seems to be a bit faulty... after a while you'll probably get used to your mechs just stopping because someone happened to get in their way for a second. Clicking twice on a location or target becomes second nature, not because you need to double-click, but because half the time your mechs just don't respond to the first click. There aren't any waypoints, which becomes more and more disappointing in "modern" RTS games. Can't these developers take a hint from Total Annihilation? That game had the most advanced and easiest waypoint system ever devised, yet no one's approached it in quality since!
There's no modern fog of war in this game. When you begin a level, the whole map will be completely black (which seems silly, because before the mission, you are presented with a clear top-down view of the entire map). As your mechs explore, sections become visible. When your units leave the area, you can still see everything in the place you just left, even mechs that enter it long after you've vacated. The whole thing ends up seeming rather backwards and unrealistic. In addition, the more of the map your explore, the slower the game becomes. Apparently you're putting more and more of a strain on the processor (whee). At the end of the level, the counting of the battle statistics has frozen up more than once on me, leaving me to puzzle out afterwards exactly what kind of salvage I'd recovered from downed mechs.
The most frustrating, annoying, and irrational aspect of this game is its absolute bullshit economy. It's not like your a mercenary organization, trading on the open market. You're dealing with your own military structure here, buying equipment with your division's own budget. And yet, your military doesn't have a problem completely fucking you over. Selling equipment gives you pennies on the dollar. I'm not talking damaged equipment, this includes pristine mechs that you just purchased. It's ludicrous the way things devalue in your possession. The worst part is the way this same bullshit economy is mirrored in multiplayer, when you're purchasing your units. You'd better plan out your entire budget beforehand, because if you make one mistake, you're screwed. This is plainly ridiculous in a multiplayer skirmish, but there it is.
All in all, this game has a lot of disappointing features. It definitely won't make anyone's Top 10 Game of All Time list. But if you can manage to get past the frustration of it all, you might actually have a blast between your fits of anger and threats to hurl the CD into the street.
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