Lighting the (Sort of) Obscure
Alright, I was trying to think of an idea that would take less time to post that a story, when I realized the solution was right in front of my face. There are tons of books, shows, cartoons, comics, games etc that I love, yet many people probably haven’t heard of them. Or, if they have heard of them, they probably stay away from them, for whatever reason. I think it’s time we start shining the light on the more obscure parts of the media, which is where some real gems lie. And don’t worry, I won’t just go in detail and summarize the whole plots of what I talk about, I’ll just give the background info and the beginning. Hopefully.
And first up, I’m going to talk about the one game I love that I know almost no one I know has even heard of, let alone played. The game that took the concept of Japanese giant robots, changed the designs slightly, and multiplied the cool by a factor of awesome. A game where Vulture didn’t mean a dinky hover bike which could barely stand up to a few zerglings, it meant a 60 ton engine of destruction, able to reign death from two kilometers away. One of the only game series where I have played every game that was ever released under its name. I’m talking about the one, the only, MechWarrior!
The Mad Dog/Vulture. 60 tons of pure destructive force.
What is this, anyway?
To know anything about what this series is, you have to learn a bit about what it originated from, the classic tabletop war-game, Battletech. Released in 1984 by FASA games, Battletech was a war-game where players controlled the futuristic armies of the militaristic, honor obsessed Clans and the feudalistic Inner Sphere factions during the 31st century. Its main claim to fame was how it incorporated giant robots, or as the game called them, Battlemechs, into its unit roster, and made them the backbone of many armies. These robots were licensed designs mostly from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, or, as the extremely different American version were called, Robotech. Due to the fact that the ‘mechs were a large draw to the game, in 1989 FASA released a game where the perspective changed from battlefield commander to mech pilot. And thus, MechWarrior was born.
Anything after that is irrelevant to what I want to talk about, because that’s about where I can start actually describing the series. To date, there have been four numbered games in the series, and an additional seven expansion packs. The gameplay and premise in each game is essentially the same throughout the series, in that you are a pilot of a Battlemech, and you have to go and blow stuff up to save your home world/destroy the evil royals/reclaim your throne/get paid. Of course, the very basic premise of every game is stupid, so it’s up to the details that actually make games worth playing and remembering. And besides, what’s so bad about piloting sixty tons of destruction anyway?
Alright then, why is this so special then?
I’m glad you asked voice that may or may not be in my head. What does make MechWarrior so different from all of the other games out there that involve people making things go boom? What is it about this game that makes me sing its praises so many years since the last installment came out? I mean, it’s just like a normal shooter, albeit one that involves giant robots blasting each other into their base atoms. What could be so special about that?
Yes, what is special about this?
The answer is it’s not just a simple shooter. It’s an extremely deep mechanized combat simulator. By using a combination of a joystick and keyboard, MechWarrior became one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played. As a player, you not only had to worry about your enemies health and your own, but also about your mechs heat levels, and it’s damage to specific parts. Too much damage to a part mean that whatever was connected to that part was unusable, as it was ripped off the ‘mech in a blaze of glory.
That wasn’t the only thing that players had to worry about, either. Weapons management was a key aspect of the game, more so than in other, faster paced games. Weapons could be grouped by their function, range, type, or whatever variable you made up. Also, every weapon on the ‘mech could be fired at once in an “Alpha Strike” for when the going got desperate.
Some people might think this is overkill. I say that as long as I still have missiles left, it's not overkill.
While to most people, shooting off every weapon at the same time seems like the best option, and should be used all the time, but they quickly learn their folly when they play the game, because of one of the other unique mechanics in the game.
And how deceptively innocuous it seemed. It was the heat mechanic, a way for the game to tell you how hot your ‘mech was running. Every time you fired your weapon, the mech would heat up by a set amount, which was dependant on the weapon fired, and the amounts of weapons fired. When the heat levels got to high, the mech would shut down while the heat levels dropped. Each mech would cool down at different rates and have different heat tolerances. Combine all of these features together, and you have the reason why no one Alpha Strikes unless they liked having to spend time after they fire sitting there doing nothing but painting a big fat target for long range missiles.
There was one more thing that made MechWarrior unique, both at the time and now. Both the torso and the legs of the ‘mech were controlled separately, meaning that one could circle strafe around a target by walking in a circle and twisting the torso; also, you could move full speed ahead while aiming at stuff behind you. This was good, because the large ‘mechs controlled about as well as an oil tanker in a sea of minivans, and even the smaller mechs didn’t exactly turn on a dime. Most of the other tactical applications for torso twisting, at least the ones that are simple enough to describe to most non-fanboys, had to do with jump-jets, which are exactly what they sound like; 90 tons of death was obviously not scary enough, so they added the ability for it to fly for short periods of time. Jump sniping, twisting and firing in mid-air, and many other things that sounded like sexual innuendoes were made possible by the combination of jump jets and torso twisting.
This is called the Timberwolf Mark II. It weighs 90 tons, and is an all-purpose combat mech. Now imagine it flying through the air, raining down lasers and missiles to anything foolish enough to stand within sight of it. Boom.
This is barely scratching the surface as to why I loved MechWarrior. There was the customizability of each mech, ranging from weapons to what it was made of, to what point defense it used, each change affected the performance of the mech; essentially more stuff and better armor equaled a slower powerhouse, while the opposite was true for having less stuff. Point defense for missiles came in different forms, which could make the mech slower, passively add to the heat levels, or have a finite amount of ammunition.
Woah! That sounds awesome! Why did I never hear about/play this game?
Now for the bad news. The reason not many people know about this game is that it is horrendously complicated. As I mentioned above, there are tons of things to keep track of, and this by proxy means there are tons of bindings to memorize. With a decent twelve button joystick, you could end up using every button on the joystick and about half the keyboard. These games were really niche games, made for the hardcore who wanted to pretend that they were death incarnate.
You know you just have one of these things hiding in your room.
Also, there hasn’t been a new numbered game in the series since 2000. Technically, the last official expansion pack came out in 2002, but that still means it has been eight years since a proper MechWarrior game came out. So really, how many people would play a game that is that old, anyway? Also, since the game is very old, it’s hard to find and very expensive. Plus, while a joystick is technically not required, it is good to have, and generally makes the game that much easier to play.
But there is hope for those of you who want to play this! Actually, two rays of hope to be specific. First, Smith & Tinker, the new owners of the license, have allowed the folks at Mek Tek to rerelease MechWarrior 4 for free, as soon as the code is finished being modified, and some other legal matters are taken care of, that is. Second, Smith & Tinker are publishing a reboot for the MechWarrior series, bringing the story back to where it was in MechWarrior 1.
Not downloading MechWarrior 4 when it is finally finished makes Darth Vader sad. And when he's sad, he shoves people into Pokeballs.
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