MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries announced

[Jarhead0331]

I got it and played through the first campaign mission. Not overly impressed yet. Graphics are a mixed bag and voice acting is pretty poor.  I'm sure it will open up once I'm managing a Lance and off on contracts. I couldn't really get into it tonight... Wife is working overnight and I'm home with a baby and a needy 6 year old. More tomorrow...

[SirAndrewD]

Two words...

Playable UrbanMech.

[Yskonyn]

Played a good deal yesterday evening.

The story is indeed pretty standard fare and if you've played Harebrained Schemes Battletech lately it will even be more of the same. Even the interface lends heavily from HBS's BT game's style.

Still, the fact that after to many years we can finally pilot our own Mechs again is just awesome! I totally agree with SirAndrewD about the physics; the bigger Mechs feel like behemoths and the smaller more nimble ones feel a lot more snappy.
The combat effects are very pleasing is well. Lasers trace damage lines over the bodies of enemy units, PPC's and high caliber autocannons feel like massive weapons of destruction.
Ploughing through buildings with a big Mech feels equally satisfying.

There are some lows to point out as well:
As much as I like the detailed maps and the way the units look, the cutscenes are in a weird place. They seem to mix prerendered scenes with live 3D game engine footage causing a 80's like special effects presentation at times, which is awkward.
Contrary to SirAndrewD I do find the voice acting to be much better than I had anticipated for a game with this budget. It's more than ok and a lot better than what we got in HBS's game IMO.

Interesting absence from the battlefield are infantry (they were present in early trailers). And the worlds I have been on so far have little in the way of infrastructure. A base or facility seems to pop out in the scenery just like that and perhaps it betrays the underlying procedural generation stuff in the game? Maybe the battlemaps are fixed, I don't know. At any rate I would have liked a more believable world generation, especially since the tutorial map is much nicer looking (and features Infantry!).
Also, your Leopard dropship is only a prop in the mission. It doesn't help you engage enemies, you cannot call it for air support and once you need to go to extraction there is no fancy docking animation (there is a fancy undocking animation at the start of a mission!), just a fade to black. A missed oppertunity IMO.
Especially since you can now walk around in first person inside the Leopard in between missions. This really helps with scale and immersion and it a great addition to the game!

The game is slow to start (as expected perhaps) and feels a bit like a chore until you have overcome the bump of having only one or two Mechs (which need extensive repairs after each mission). Once the game opens up and you're free to actually run your Merc company hunting for gear, Mechs and contracts the game becomes super fun!

So, in closing; I think this game will definately be liked by many BT fans. Piloting Mechs and working to make your Merc outfit remains very fun and MW hasn't looked better. The fact that the game features a procedural campaign generator makes for endless gameplay.

Still, the lower budget shines through at times and the world isn't as fully realised as I hoped.

I'd give it a 7 out 10 with the remark that it certainly has potential to become an 8 or even a 9 with the proper patches and or expansions.
It really is a solid MW game.

[Jarhead0331]

Is the campaign open ended or linear. Can you go on infinite side missions and contracts that do not follow the story campaign?

[Yskonyn]

Its open ended. It's basically a similar setup to HBS's BattleTech where you have a main storyline and then randomly generated side contracts.
I expect Piranha to come out with a patch somewhere down the road to enable us to skip the tutorial and early story stuff and make a seperate Merc sandbox game mode, just like HBS did.
But that's not currently implemented. You need to go through the tutorial and the story in the campaign.

EDIT: Well in fact its not really open ended due to the story, of course. But you can leave the story and just do the random contracts if you want. So yeah.. both. ;)

I tell you, though; firing off those Mech weapons is pretty spectacular! The bigger weapons really have that oompf factor.
Lasers burn off armor realistically and the Mechs look more and more worn and damaged as a battle goes on.
Explosions are similarly satisfying. :D The action definately is the game's strong suit.

I hope mobile repair bays (like we had in 3) get added as well as a more defined combined operations setup. And please, for the love of immersion, get that infantry (back) in game! The bases we raid are devoid of life so far, save from the suddenly appearing tanks, which is awkward.

I also hope (maybe its already in for later missions) that 4 Mechs in a mission is not the maximum, but that there will be missions where several Lances work together. So far I have only worked with my own Lance.

[Gusington]

Any guesses as to how many hours the story part of the campaign lasts?

[Destraex]

I enjoyed this review:

[SirAndrewD]

MFW I got a payout on a mission of 325,000 C-Bills and incurred 550,000 in damage. 

Ahhh, this is Mechwarrior. 

I agree with many points of the above review.  The game needs to teethe, but it'd danged fun as it is.  Those of you patient enough to wait for Steam to get it will probably get a highly patched and refined classic. 

So, it's ok to wait Gus.  Though, I miss you on my co-op.

[Yskonyn]

@Destraex I tried watching that video you linked, but man, I have zero tolerance for those type of youtubers who start off ranting and kicking and shouting. He might actually have made a fair first impressions video after the opening few minutes, but I just can't be fussed to keep watching.
Lots of people seem to think that screaming and shouting is fun. It isn't. It is annoying as heck.
It's got nothing to do with you, of course, however. :D I just can't bear watching that vid. lol.

Anyway, SirAndrewD raises a valid point. With the way the game is setup (only one controllable Lance) there is little to be done in the way of tactics on the battlefield. The fairly basic AI doesn't help either (though the enemy seems to suffer from the same basic AI).
What I mean is that most meeting engagements are just slugfests where the only variable in keeping damage cost under control is making sure the enemy gets killed as quickly as possibly before it can damage your units badly.
And this is why you often see pretty high repair costs.
Truth be told that you can bargain for higher damage cost 'insurance' before a mission starts. This will help quite well, but as you only have a few points to spend to haggle with (and need to choose between higher overall pay, salvage rights and damage insurance) many times one of the other options seems more enticing.

Anyway, if the game had more tools to actually plan an engagement or feature combined arms (like the Tabletop game does) it would definately help with keeping damage cost in check even more as well as make the battles more interesting.

But it is what it is; you just have to haggle for damage insurance if you feel like you take a lot of damage on a mission.

[Destraex]

Yskonyn,
I agree the youtuber is annoying and overly dramatic. But you are right, he knows his stuff and compares mw5 to the older mw games. That is something that most youtubers are not able to do it seems. Heck, one of the game magazine channels had a guy that knew zero about mechwarrior reviewing it for them. Another youtuber compared it with console big robot titles. I liked that the youtuber I posted remembered things from the older titles like the bitching betty " reactor online, weapons online" , or the awesome music tracks from the older games. He also mentions the lack of collission damage, so no knocking other mechs over with multiple shots or ramming like in mw4 iirc. GYRO or destabilisation as a result does not seem to be modelled either, but rather camera shake. He misses the dinging sounds when you get hit as well.
He sited the lack of the animations conforming to the terrain, especially feet sliding or not matching slope. Missile animations jerking at immediate angles instead of arcing. He is apparently very familiar with the unreal engine and sites he will notice laziness. Which he claimed was shown very clearly in the terrain destruction being minecraft like in that only box like portions are bitten off\destroyed.
He mentions that he hated the MWO animations and they look to have been ported. He would like a slower loping animation that reflects size more than the gazelle like motion they currently have.
He also mentioned the simple mistakes they made like having the grass scale make the mechs look like humans. The grass apparently would completely cover a man in MW5 while coming up to a mechs feet like it would on a man.
He did not like the AI either. The AI simply sitting their to be killed or running in circles. I gather it does not feel like a real mission with enemy that have unique character each time you land. But I was not expecting that.
I liked the new laser effects and he did not. I like that the new lasers look more like they are interfered with by other light.

He did however like the new mechbay system which does not allow crazy builds that appeared in MWO. Because variants seem to be more locked down like the original battletech system. Just because the weapon fits does not mean the chassis will connect to it basically.

[Gusington]

You joke SirAndrew, but this is the one game that made me really consider downloading Epic 😢

[Jarhead0331]

I dunno...it's kind of fun, I guess...but overall I am pretty disappointed so far. This release was the one I anticipated more than any other in recent memory. Its a decent game and has some things that I like, but it could have been absolutely epic and it's just not. You know there is something wrong with a game when shortly after trying it out, you are looking into re-installing one of its decades old predecessors and that is literally what I did here, researching how to get MW3: Mercenaries to run on win10.

In any event, I just find the combat to be pretty lackluster. Sensors suck. Enemies are upon you before you really have a chance to prepare a strategy. It ends up just becoming a slug fest and a rush to blow everything up. Tanks and choppers just roll around or fly side to side. Enemy mechs just run in circles and they don't seem to miss the mark very often.  There is very little opportunity to try to avoid taking damage, other than just trying to be faster on the draw with precision accuracy. These are some of the same objections I had to HBS Battletech. There was just no diversity of tactics. The only thing that worked was to concentrate firepower and pray. Get heavier mechs, with larger guns. That's it. There is such a lack of equipment and modules that could make the game so much more interesting...ECM, EW, advanced radars and sonars, tracking systems, stealth tech, smoke generators, etc. Why don't they have shit like this thousands of years into the future? The lame excuses that the lore makes for this just don't jive with me. Its a cop out.

I think ultimately, most of my gripes are relatively minor, but there are so many of them that together they begin to weigh the title down.

An updated single player MW game was a dream come true.  Piranha could have made one for the record books, but I'm afraid once the luster of a new mech game wears off, this one won't be much noticeable in my library. We'll see...I still haven't gotten much into the Company management aspect, so perhaps this will add a level of complexity that makes up for some of the tactical disappointment. 

[Yskonyn]

I totally agree with your view that the game could be so much more.
I also find it very annoying that the actual gameplay can be summarized as 'slugfest' while on planet.
Like you, most of my gripes are minor things when viewed separately, but when looked at from the whole I do get the feeling the game is rather low budget (as I've pointed out above)

You raise a good point about EW, Smoke, Tracking, etc. The kicker is that the game starts in 3015 and that's when the Helm Core hasn't been found yet. However I've also read that the game runs for several decades, so that would mean advanced tech should become available further along in the campaign... If not, then yes, the game is pretty bare-bones on the combat execution side.

So I am not yet ready to give it my final mark.

[Jarhead0331]

So I am not yet ready to give it my final mark.

True. Me neither. I'm disappointed, but not so put off that I will not continue to explore. Hopefully, there will be some surprises! 

[bboyer66]

Think Jarhead hit the nail on the head in summarizing how I feel as well about the game.

On one mission I took a roundabout way to the objective, and enemy tanks just spawned out of nowhere, 100 meters in front of me. A total immersion breaker.

  Not a lot of tactics in combat.  Just wave after wave of enemies that you try to shoot up. The constant waves of  kamikaze tanks, and helicopters is also an immersion breaker.

Ordering your lance to do specific things is a chore, and without much benefit.  My only real tactic so far is to have my lance constantly form up on me so they don't get too far away, and we can spread damage out among us. Then my lance still just seems to run off and do their own thing anyways.

Trying to tell how much damage your taking from the enemy, or dealing to the enemy, is not easy. As almost everything indicating damage on the HUD is orange, or red within 15 seconds of combat starting.

Anyone figure out if you can use jump-jets to do death from above attacks, on other mechs? So far I have only found them useful for jumping up ledges, where you will get quickly toasted by any enemy who can see you. At this point I just might take off all jump jets and beef up the armor on my light mechs.

The campaign is pretty standard. Not great, but no real complaints.

The customization you can do to your mechs is nice.

So ya, I also am a little disappointed. Hopefully they can improve things, especially when it comes to combat. The best part of the game is that it made me want to play the older, more tactics oriented Battletech game that came out in 2018. From what I understand this has a new open world campaign, as well as a bunch of new stuff with expansions. At this point I wish I would have just spent the money I spent on Mechwarrior,  on Battletech instead, to bring the game up to date with the expansions.