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 From Transformers to imported Japanese mecha anime to Disney’s
soon-to-be-released Iron Giant, an entire generation of Americans has grown up indulging a
fascination with giant robots. This fascination undoubtedly springs from the same twisted
strands of the US psyche as those that engender our love of big-ass vehicles and big-ass
guns, so it’s probably best not to consider it too closely. But whatever its origin,
our mania for big bots has produced an entire giant robot industry, the gaming division of
which has always been forefronted by the Battletech miniatures and board games. The
franchise’s ascendancy has manifested itself on the PC as well, especially since the
appearance of MechWarrior 2 in 1995 (yeah, it’s been that long). Though
pretenders—Starsiege and Heavy Gear, to cite the most prominent examples—have
since attempted to wrest the giant bot crown from MechWarrior 2, the King stayed on top.
But now the much-anticipated MechWarrior 3 has appeared, and The King is Dead. Long Live
the King. MechWarrior 3 takes all the gameplay and features that made MechWarrior 2 such a terrific game and improves upon them. It also adds some nice new twists, upgrades the graphics engine, cleans up the interface, and takes advantage of the technological advances that have transpired in the last four years—including great force-feedback support. It all adds up to the most fun and immersive giant mech game yet. And that’s why the few flaws the game does have, chief amongst them some pretty terrible AI, tend to detract disproportionately from the game’s overall excellence.  MechWarrior 3’s campaign game takes its narrative from the ongoing
Battletech universe saga. You take the role of a lance commander in the Eridani Light
Horse, the "elite of the elite" of the Inner Sphere’s fighting forces. Your
mission is to act as part of a commando raiding force against the Smoke Jaguar Clan, a
notorious group of bad-apple types. Unfortunately, the mission starts off badly, and most
of your forces are scattered or lost. This leaves you to do the brunt of the dirty work,
aided by whatever remnants of Eridani Light Horse you stumble upon during your actions.
The campaign game has taken a lot of heat from reviewers, mostly for coming in a little on
the short side at only 20 missions. Frankly, the campaign’s alleged
brevity—it’s not that short—isn’t as much a problem to me as
its relentless linearity and sameness. Though each mission is preceded by a great
briefing—this game’s got some of the best voice acting around—the missions
themselves tend to play out very similarly, and objectives are almost always of the
"go blow up these buildings and oh yeah blow up any enemy mechs you run across "
variety. And there’s not a lot of replay value, either; each mission is rigidly
scripted, and you’ll meet the same enemies in the same place each time you play.
Given the obvious care Microprose put into setting the missions up, playing them out is a
bit of a letdown.
Of course you can always choose to play the Instant Action option, which allows you to select and configure a mech and fight either by yourself or with lance mates against enemy forces. You can also vary the battle type, map, and friendly and enemy mechs, so Instant Action adds a lot of the replay value the campaign lacks.  The game’s graphics are excellent; though not up to par with, say,
Unreal’s, this is by far the best-looking mech game yet. The mechs themselves are
lovingly detailed, and the landscape--though mostly barren with only the occasional
tree--is very atmospheric. Weapons effects, from pulse lasers to broadsides of guided
missles, are way cool, as are the game’s lighting effects. But the best thing about
the graphics is the unstinting attention paid to detail throughout. Big explosions leave
big holes in the ground that you can use for cover, and damage to mechs is exceptionally
well-represented; if a mech overheats, gets an arm blown off, and takes damage to its leg,
you’ll see a smoking, limping mech with cables hanging from where its arm used to be.
Likewise, the sound is very good, especially for weapons and mech effects. There’s nothing that will raise your morale faster than the reassuring and imposing sound of your mech’s footfalls as it stalks its prey, and nothing that will lower it faster than the sound of enemy autocannon shells hammering away at your armor. The detail and care put into graphics and sound go a long way towards drawing you into the game.  And the game’s interface doesn’t get in the way of your enjoyment,
either; not only does your mech’s HUD give you all the info you need at a glance, but
the keyboard commands seem to have been simplified from the previous game. I played with
my Force Feedback Pro joystick, and the preset configuration allowed me to play the game
with only occasional recourse to keystrokes. The only clunky part of the game’s
interface was the lancemate controls, which were clumsy to implement and very limited.
Getting into the game is easy, too; MechWarrior 3 comes with a solid manual—though it could be a little more explicit about how to use the mech lab—and an excellent tutorial. But gameplay is the bottom line, and gameplay is where MechWarrior 3 really shines. The typical MechWarrior 3 mission begins in the mech lab, where you’ll choose a mech and its equipment. Different mechs are good for different missions; some are fast but fragile, some big but lumbering, some all-round average. After selecting a mech chassis, you’ll have to configure its weapons loadout. Mechs have a limited number of "critical locations" where equipment can be mounted and a limited amount of weight they can bear, so configuring them is a delicate balancing act. This is complicated by the fact that weapons fall into one of two categories--energy weapons that produce massive amounts of heat that can cause your mech to shut down, and ordnance weapons that require space-consuming ammo. Of course there are lots of other little niceties that you’ll want to slap on your mech—extra armor, heat sinks, anti-missile systems, targeting systems, jump jets, enhanced radar—and of course there will never be enough room for everything you want. You can, if you wish, forgo all this fussing around in the mech lab and accept the mech’s default configuration, but I wouldn’t advise it. A good part of a mission’s success depends upon how you configure your mech, and when you get the hang of it it’s a great deal of fun as well.  Once you’ve configured your mech, you’ll begin your mission. At
first, you’ll fight alone, accompanied by only three mobile field bases (MFBs) for
support. The MFBs are fragile support vehicles that allow you to refit, rearm, and repair
your vehicle in the field, and believe me, you’ll need them. Many’s the time my
damaged and out of ammo mech has limped into the welcoming arms of MFBs. MFBs also gather
the salvage you accrue during your missions, and as you advance you’ll use this
salvage to add new, more powerful mechs and weapons to your arsenal.
After beginning your mission, you’ll almost immediately find yourself in the thick of battle. This is the real fun of MechWarrior 3, and mech combat has never been so good. The game’s intuitive controls and interface allow you to focus on controlling your lumbering mech and engaging enemy forces, and most battles are nail-biting affairs. There’s nothing like desperately hoping your reeling mech’s armor will hold up against enemy missiles until your lasers recharge enough to allow you to deal the coup de grace. Combat has been refined and improved by the additions of some really nifty features, like the ability to zoom your targeting reticule (great for those long-range laser shots) and to target specific locations on enemy mechs. And if your mech overheats (almost a certainty in the heat of battle) you can avoid the ensuing shut-down by flushing your coolant, at least a couple of times each mission.  As your advance in the game, you’ll meet up with members of the Eridani
Light Horse, and these lancemates will accompany you through the campaign. Unfortunately,
the lancemate controls are very limited, and lancemate AI is very weak. The only useful
lancemate combat command is "attack my target", and the only useful movement
command is "follow me." It would be nice to have a few more combat attack
options, and it’s beyond me why formations were not included in the movement options.
As it is, your fellow mechs will usually just trail along behind you like chicks after a
hen, which is not, I think, the sort of formation the "elite of the elite" would
use in combat. Even worse, your lancemates are also terribly stupid. Examples of their
blighted AI includes getting in the way of MFB deployment, running into your line of fire
and then complaining when you shoot them, getting hung up while moving, and calmly
standing around and watching while you struggle with 3 enemy mechs. These AI
problems extend to enemy AI as well. The Smoke Jaguars sometimes behave like they’ve
been smoking something indeed. They’ll often let you fire away at range without
reacting, and in combat they’ll sometimes inexplicably fail to press an advantage.
Multiplayer is a blast, though somewhat limited as well. The only options are team or FFA deathmatch, though when I played on the Zone, the team option wasn’t running just yet. Still, multiplayer was smooth and mostly lag-free, though a few more game options—like capture and hold or capture the flag—might prevent the ubiquitous overuse of jump jets that plagues the Zone’s MechWarrior rooms. From a distance, some multiplayer games look like nothing so much as a field swarming with grasshoppers. Stupid jump jets. But overall MechWarrior 3 is a terrific game, and very much worth your hard-earned cash. Though I’d like to see the AI tweaked, the campaign improved, and the multiplayer options increased, it’s not like this is gonna be the last MechWarrior 3 game. The game will undoubtedly spawn a long series of expansion packs, and given that most of the engine is in place and exceptional, perhaps the design team can direct their energies toward remedying these minor but still irritating problems. |
