MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

I LOVED MechWarrior 2 back in the day and I wanted to love this too, but it's just mediocre. I play with a gamepad, and that makes it even worse. Cons: - Can't customize gamepad controls. It seems non-Xbox gamepads can be customized, but I use one. There's some presets, but... - Can't center legs under torso from the gamepad! This is the deal killer for me. (For newbies: BattleMechs move and fire in different directions. However, they steer like a tank -you can rotate, but not move sideways. Centering quickly matches your movement direction to the aiming direction; without it, steering in combat is a pain.) - No checkpoints! Get ready to repeat ad nauseam the first part of a long mission just because you keep getting killed in the second. After a while you just don't care anymore. - Three different zoom levels. Meaning you just can't toggle zoom on/off, but have to double tap most of the time (the middle zoom level is useless). - No difficulty levels. My go-to solution for dealing with braindead games, lowering the difficulty, is of course unavailable. - Breaks immersion too much. No center legs means getting distracted from combat to center manually; Irishmen in space a thousand years from now; first-person POV but voice acting for your character. - No spoilers: After the tutorial, something really cool happens: lots of action and danger, life-and-death stakes... man, I wish that cutscene was a playable mission. - The tutorial is a bit basic, and doesn't cover everything you do in game later (like management). Inline help is a joke. It's playable (that's why it gets two stars instead of one) but for gamepad players like me the lack of center legs (and button config) pretty much kills it. For keyboard players I'd rate it three stars, but its other issues mean it's just a meh game. And yes, my beloved MW2 is keyboard only and center legs is available here using the keyboard, but I really prefer using a gamepad. Without a mod fixing the gamepad, I won't play this.

There is a good core here, the mechs, weapons and general gameplay are excellent, MW5 is also mod friendly and has a strong modding community. Unfortunately that is where the positive points end. The main gameplay loop consists of procedurally generated missions with a story that is devoid of any compelling events or interesting chartacters, try as they might, the voice actors can only give a mediocre performance with the script they have been given. Mission design consist of the same limited objectives on a procedually generated map and tonnage mismatches between your lance and the enemy force will determine wether the mission is a walk in the park or impossible. Companion AI is an oxymoron, they have no intelligence and command options are too limited to make up for Artificial Stupidity. You can't tell your missile mech to stand back and focus on launching missiles or tell your fire support mech to stay in formation and stop walking in front of you right as you fire both your PPC's. DLC The DLC goes some way towards fixing the story problems with better crafted mission design and at least some character, hardcore Battletech fans will get the most out of seeing lore relevent characters and events. MODS MW5 is easy to mod and essential if you are going to get the most out of the game. Considering that modders are not paid for their work the quality is going to vary wildly.

first off the weight limit for the missions is stupid. if i was hiring a crew of mechs and one crew had 145 ton and another crew had 250 ton but they will still get paid the same i would hire the 250 ton crew. buying and selling mechs is broken. buy a mech destroyed 2 million credits, sell the same mech fully repaired 1 million credits. just like what other people have written the game is broken. you are limited to a tonnage for your mechs but the enemy is not they can and will throw mech after mech at you with tanks and helicopters. finding good mechs to buy is also a waste of time. go to one plantet and they sell one or two destroyed mechs. so jump to the next plantet pay the 50,000 travel cost and see what they have to sell well they only have one mech and it is destroyed and one you have or dont want. repeat over and over again and again. in the missions when i get a contract that finally pays well with salvage i never get anything worth taking. if i get a mission with a low payout for the salvage i get awesome mechs but can not get them because the cost is too high. this game is just frustrating.

I was disappointed in this game on almost every front. MechWarrior has been one of my favorite franchises, MW3 was a great game, and I've been hoping for a good new MW game, but: The mechs don't feel weighty or substantial. The missions are boring and repeatitive in boring and repeatitive "arena" type areas that don't feel real or interesting or engaging. The dropship is virtually empty given there's nothing to do and no conversations to have in it; you can't upgrade later to a better drop ship even. You're stuck with a max of a single lance (four mechs) being deployed. There's a whole bunch of other things that I wrote down but then GoG failed to post my review and I don't feel like typing them up again. The whole thing feels like it lacks details and polish. Like the minimum amount of effort went into making it. I got bored of playing it very quickly, with how the missions are just the same thing over and over. At this rate I probably won't even stick it out to complete the main storyline. (Played hours are inflated; I often leave games open while I'm alt-tabbed out doing other things. Especially when the games are kinda tedious and uninteresting like this one.)

TL:DR Do NOT buy! Go download Mechcommander Gold, still free from the owners of it to this day! Good: -visuals & ui -music -voice acting -story stuff Bad: There is NO radar system; The entire lock on mechanic is line of sight! If you know anything about LRM's, this means they are essentially useless. LRMs are still required at medium range because SRMs are all dumbfire! (there are no MRMs) The AI is dumber then any other mechwarrior game I've EVER played! I have played mechwarrrior 3 onwards! When the ai companions detect an enemy, they will advance on that enemy until they are within kissing distance and rarely do more then take a couple steps side to side. They WILL occasionally fire at an enemy... however they target randomly unless you choose their target. This works against vehicles and is suicidal against mechs. They WILL shoot their allies in the back. They WILL fire a weapon when NOT facing an enemy at all! Mechcommander Gold has better ai and that game is ANCIENT. Skill levels in a weapon type gives damage multipliers, instead of aim. Aim is 100% perfect accuracy, unless the target is moving, then it gets a random miss value added. This guarantees that you will always take massive damage to your mechs and usually lose systems, etc before the mission is over. This is shit because.... You get paid less then repair costs for the average mission! The above also assumes you can maneuver and shoot well; if you can't, you are completely relying on the ai, who are pretty worthless in the area of avoidance. EVERYTHING takes stupidly long periods of time! Jumping to the next system over?; 20 days. Repairing ONLY the armour on a mech?; half a month at minimum. Adding a few weapons system?; adds a mimum of another month... usually multiple months! I forced myself to play this for roughly several weeks off and on, trying to like it. I can't; it's a bad mechwarrior game; all the mechanics are poorly thought out and VERY badly implemented!