73 replies to this topic

[MeiSooHaityu]

I never played the Mech Assault games. I always played the Mechwarrior games on the PC, but I always assumed the Assault games were too arcadey.

[ice trey]

Mechassaults were too arcady and had little to nothing to do with Battletech. Microsoft just lifted some Battletech designs in order to piggyback on it's popularity. Might have been a fun game for some, but I play Battletech games for immersion in the setting.

Mechcommander 1 had me gnashing my teeth when it was new, not just because of the oversimplified customization system but because of it's ram requirements at the time. Even a computer with twice the minimum requirements would lag out. However, I warmed up to it for being genuinely challenging and bringing some very interesting gameplay ideas to the table. Further, it still managed to capture the overall feel of the Battletech universe.

Mechcommander 2 was a lot like MC1. I liked the overarching story and the use of live actors to really draw you into the campaign. However, the game was surprisingly easy, and if not for horrible graphics glitches, It'd be part of my standard repertoire. I just wish the Davions weren't depicted as "Oh hey look at all this Clantech we've got holy smokes"

Mechwarrior 4 grew on me, not for it's mechanics, but for it's campaign. I liked the character building, even with hammy acting, Mechwarrior 4 mercs made more interesting missions, but I felt more detached from the story. Mektek helped to make the only MW game that would easily run on Vista stay fresh, but the multiplayer was an atrocity, and it was a key player in turning me off of online play for good. The few mods that were a step in the right direction (Like Netmech IV 3025) ended up being so underpopulated it wasn't worth logging in. Everyone just played MW4 Mercs in no-heat-unlimited-ammo poptartstravaganzas in the heaviest chassis they could.

By this point, I was pretty turned off by MW's slow but steady turning away from the core materials, as games seemed to be less being made in order to recreate the Battletech universe, and more to piggyback on the popularity of a tiny handful of robot designs. When Living Legends was advertised, I was pretty excited at first, but as more and more preview vids came out, I noticed more and more things I didn't like about it. It became pretty apparent that this game was just taking all the things that I hated about Mechwarrior 4, made them staples, and then fused it with Battlefield-style mechanics. Slap in some "You ride a mech from inside of a Battle-Armor suit (Not at all unlike ism's from Mechassault 2 Lone wolf), a roster that seems to cherrypick whatever happens to be the most popular mechs from MW4, and worst of all, have absolutely nothing to it to cater to fans of the single player experience, and you have got a real hard sell for me to want to pick up. Add to the fact that this was the mod for some Crysis expansion spin off some-such, and my interest was lost.

Mechwarrior Tactics looked like it could have been a lot of fun and a great bridge to bring people back and forth from Battletech tabletop and the computer gaming scene. I have no idea why the devs behind MWT decided that they had to revise the Battletech rules and numbers in order to "Make it their own", when the whole reason their project came into play was because of people claiming they would love to have a full 3D version of Megamek - which is just a recreation of the Battletech board game in Java. Also, they released on Beta WAY too early as the game was not even playable, and their not making any moves to release to Android at the bare minimum feels like a poor idea for something that feels more like a timekiller app than a legitimate game.

MWO has bent me over and had it's way with me with it's slough of broken promises, but since Mechwarrior 3, it's so far been the most true-to-Battletech video game option that we've had, official or fan-made. The now-hollow-sounding promises of Community Warfare promises to give weight and meaning to the otherwise droning, "doesn't actually mean anything to me" wins and losses.The more-or-less adhering to the Battletech criticals system means that when this game came out, I was easily able to introduce new players to Tabletop Battletech, and I no longer had to worry about Microsoft getting liberal with mech designs to the point that I couldn't customize them back to their Canon configurations (Loki and Vulture, I'm looking at you). Also, their adhering to canon Battletech designs and chassis, their initial Newsfeeds during the closed beta, the gameplay during closed beta prior to DHS, ECM, and Repair removal, Those were all fantastic. The ability to paint your mechs is right up my alley. I'm disappointed as hell that nobody - PGI or fan community - will ever lift a finger to make a nominal attempt at an immersive Battletech single player experience ever again, but this comes as the best possible alternative, in my books.

Edited by ice trey, 14 November 2014 - 06:22 AM.

[Egomane]

QuantumButler, on 14 November 2014 - 01:12 AM, said:

There was a better choice, it was called Living Legends, but it had too many features making MWO look bad so they killed it. [it was about to get a mechlab before the devs were forced to shut down]

It's not shut down! You can still download and play it.

Development stopped, that's all. You can either believe the early statement, that it was a cease and desist, like some of the co-modder of the game claimed, or you can believe the official statement by the head-mod and by PGI, that this was not the case.

Repeating the one sided statement, that this is PGIs fault, without proof towards it, is getting stale.


Back on topic:
I don't know if PGI saved us from a Mechassault 3. MS was sitting on that licence for a while without doing anything with it, so I doubt they would have created another game with it anytime soon.

Luckily I never touched MA 1 or 2. Mechcommander 2 and Mechwarrior 4 were real turn offs for me already, so I didn't even bother to look for new MW games from Microsoft for a while.

Edited by Egomane, 14 November 2014 - 06:26 AM.

[ibex230]

I loved mechassault from 2003 or w/e. Flame away.

[MastersVoice]

A new Crescent Hawk's RPG would be nice

[Lulz Kev]

I enjoyed mech assault. A lot.

[SI The Joker]

Ugh Micro$oft. The whole reason we have these discussions/issues around TTK, pinpoint damage and the like is because of what Micro$oft did to the franchise starting with MW3.

They set the stage for this IP to lean more towards the "FPS" style game as opposed to the 'simulator' style that Activision put together with MW2. It's been a struggle ever since.


Mech Commander was great - I was very fortunate to be able to work at Fasa Interactive as an Internal Tester. My name is even in the manual. THAT was a fun game. Mech Commander 2 wasn't all that bad... just... not as good.

I think alot of folks would buy/play/love a turn-based Battletech game that actually works. Too bad Tactics was horrendous... buuuut even that's offline now.

https://www.mwtactics.com/

[EGH]

mechassault was a super fun game, if you take it for what it is, an arcadey robot game with a battletech skin.

Who cares if its not realistic or not a sim. it was a fun game.

[CDLord HHGD]

dangerzone, on 13 November 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

Russ just said on the Twitch Townhall that he has been talking with Microsoft for the past couple years and they have a great relationship with Microsoft.

Russ then said that, IF MICROSOFT MADE ANOTHER BT/MW GAME THEY WOULD HAVE MADE ANOTHER MECHASSAULT GAME. Basically.

PGI saved us from Mechassault! WOO!

Note: Mechassault 1 and 2 were the **** back in my days on the original xbox, but I'm SOOOOOO glad we got a legitimate MW game and not arcadewarrior: online.

Rejoice!

While I understand the significant difference between MWO and MA for XBox, for a while, that was all I could play. While not the best example of the genre, it was something to fill the need.....

[Mystere]

What I would like to see is:

Total War: BattleTech

Edited by Mystere, 14 November 2014 - 09:49 AM.

[cSand]

Captain Stiffy, on 13 November 2014 - 10:46 PM, said:

Doesn't sound so bad. I'd be all about a game I only have to pay for once.

What about a game you don't have to pay for at all?

[Blakkstar]

The Mechassault games were fun console shooters, but bad Battletech games. Running around jacking Mechs and grabbing power ups pretty much killed any sim aspect of the game.

Lone Wolf also tried a persistent multiplayer Inner Sphere. Any Battletech player would get pumped watching this intro video:

[Glythe]

dangerzone, on 13 November 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

PGI saved us from Mechassault! WOO!

Note: Mechassault 1 and 2 were the **** back in my days on the original xbox, but I'm SOOOOOO glad we got a legitimate MW game and not arcadewarrior: online.

Rejoice!

No offense but everything I see this company do seems to show that they are trying to make this Mechassault 3 online. The TTK values are way too low and they don't care.

I loved mechassault for what it was..... an arcade style game. At the competitive level it still had really great gameplay.

On the other hand MWO is just meh. It's not a sim it's not an arcade..... it wants to be both and fails at both.

Don't even talk about Mechassault 2 as that was complete garbage. It was ruined by many things.... but mainly the alpha strike BS. And we have that in MWO..... /sigh. It's clear these guys know nothing about video games and I am sad to see that the devs admit to less than 50 hours in any game that isn't mwo.

Edited by Glythe, 14 November 2014 - 10:00 AM.

[QuantumButler]

Glythe, on 14 November 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

No offense but everything I see this company do seems to show that they are trying to make this Mechassault 3 online. The TTK values are way too low and they don't care.

I loved mechassault for what it was..... an arcade style game. At the competitive level it still had really great gameplay.

On the other hand MWO is just meh. It's not a sim it's not an arcade..... it wants to be both and fails at both.

Don't even talk about Mechassault 2 as that was complete garbage. It was ruined by many things.... but mainly the alpha strike BS. And we have that in MWO..... /sigh. It's clear these guys know nothing about video games and I am sad to see that the devs admit to less than 50 hours in any game that isn't mwo.

Like I've said before, "MechAssault" has become a dirty word and people who have never played it just hate it because that's the thing to do, never mind that they were pretty fun games.

No one is ever bashing the old Mechwarrior game on the Sega Genesis that was even more basic and arcade-y, just Mech Assault.

[cSand]

Glythe, on 14 November 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

It's clear these guys know nothing about video games and I am sad to see that the devs admit to less than 50 hours in any game that isn't mwo.

.... in one forum warrior's (humble) opinion



right?

[Captain Stiffy]

cSand, on 14 November 2014 - 09:44 AM, said:

What about a game you don't have to pay for at all?

Unicorn.

[Sandpit]

QuantumButler, on 14 November 2014 - 10:06 AM, said:

Like I've said before, "MechAssault" has become a dirty word and people who have never played it just hate it because that's the thing to do, never mind that they were pretty fun games.

No one is ever bashing the old Mechwarrior game on the Sega Genesis that was even more basic and arcade-y, just Mech Assault.

I played it, I played it because I was relegated to console gaming at the time. I bought it entirely because it was a Btech based game.
The mech combat was ok, nothing special
I accepted it for an "arcadey" version of piloting a mech and getting my Btech fix.

It was "ok", but that was about it.

[Spr1ggan]

KisumiKitsune, on 13 November 2014 - 08:33 PM, said:

I think hating 'mechassault is the cool-kid thing to do. It was a fun game. Very not-mechwarrior feeling, but neither was 'mechcommander when compared to the old school sims of 1-4. But yes, a sim game always does the stompy robots the most justice, so it's good that at least someone is doing something like MWO. However, I wouldn't be sad to see Microsoft put out another arcade style one either, because it'll be fun for what it is. Which will be a vaguely-battletech-flavored arcade game.

That's probably because mechcommander was about being the commander...

[LordKnightFandragon]

And yet oddly enough, MWO feels more like Mechassault 3 then a Mechwarrior5....

McHarg, on 20 November 2014 - 06:23 PM, said:

That's probably because mechcommander was about being the commander...

Mechcommander Gold rocks lol. I still sometimes play it.

Mechcommander 2....that game is very annoying, the rate of headshots is like literally, every 5th shot is a headshot.......if my dudes dont get headshot they dont take damage....

[Mercules]

mindwarp, on 13 November 2014 - 11:58 PM, said:

People keep going on about hating Battletech games that are "arcade" games. But there is/was a Battletech arcade game. Well, more of a simulator pod, but it was a game in an arcade.

http://en.wikipedia....tleTech_Centers

Those were never in "Video Arcades". They were in centers in various places and still exist. They had a few different ways to play it with less complex controls and much more "sim like" controls. I really need to wander over to the local place and get to know those guys.

QuantumButler, on 14 November 2014 - 10:06 AM, said:

Like I've said before, "MechAssault" has become a dirty word and people who have never played it just hate it because that's the thing to do, never mind that they were pretty fun games.

No one is ever bashing the old Mechwarrior game on the Sega Genesis that was even more basic and arcade-y, just Mech Assault.

Oh I'll happily bash all the crappy "arcade-y" Battletech/Mechwarrior games that have come out. There is a an actual arcade game that does a helicopter game, tank game, and Battletech game. I HAD to try it and wow was it disappointing. It was about as bad as the mechassault games. I found nothing redeeming about them. What they basically reminded me of was a 3D version of the "flying shooter games" where you shoot enemies while dodging their fire, blow up certain things, and power ups drop out that make your guns more powerful. You know: