Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance Review
| Developer: Microsoft Publisher: Microsoft System Requirements: Processor: 300 Mhz Pentium II or higher Memory: 64mb of RAM, 96 for multiplayer Disk Space: 500 MB Video: 8MB 3D card |
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Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance is a fun action packed mech simulator game. A friend gave this to me to review. I've enjoyed it much. The graphics are great for the relatively low system requirements, and it ran fine on my system with the graphics at full. The gameplay is fantastic and as my feelings on any game are gameplay is number one, I'm going to focus on that in this review.
First, my favorite aspect of Mechwarrior 4: the customization of your mech. Before you take your mech into battle you can outfit it with 3 classes of weapons. Each weapon has a certain weight so it's not uncommon to have empty slots when you're done outfitting your mech. Among the weapon classes are energy, ballistic and missile. Energy weapons can fire an infinite number of rounds, but tend to be weaker than their ballistic counterparts. Energy weapons range from small lasers to powerful particle projection cannons. Ballistic weapons can only fire a limited number of rounds in a battle, but they tend to be fairly powerful. There are some really sucky weapons like machine guns, but later you can outfit your mech with more powerful weapons like the gauss rifle (my favorite weapon). The ammunition limitation can be annoying, but you shouldn't be firing a gauss rifle at a small vehicle. Finally, missile weapons. Some require a lock, some do not. The homing capability is very useful, but I didn't use missile weapons very often during my game as I prefer to be up close in combat. You can add additional ammunition to ballistic and missile weapons for a little extra weight.
Every mech has the weight limit of course, but also mechs only have so many slots to place weapons on the body. A weapon like a machine gun will only work on the ballistic racks (these are all color coded) and will take up one slot. A larger weapon will take up more slots, but usually you're better off with some big guns in combat and won't mind not having a large number of weapons. Quality over quantity so to say. On some mechs there also exists omni slots on which you can place any type of weapon.
Further on customizing your mech, there are optional components you can install. Such as a device which helps you to see at night, anti-missile systems and jump jets. You can place more armor on your mech and choose an armor type. Specialized armor can protect against ballistic or energy rounds, while the normal armor is less effective but weighs much less. Your mech can be upgraded to higher speed, and it's recommended to go fast as the enemy mechs can really dish some damage on later levels and the massive mechs you'll be getting later will be pretty darn slow.
The battles in Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance are very well designed. Multiple mission objectives usually exist on many of the maps. Completing the secondary objectives on a mission will usually yield you better parts at the end of the battle. You are rewarded at the end with parts of enemy mechs and sometimes entire mech types you can make your own. Mechs can be damaged on any of their parts. Hit an enemy mech from long range on the arm and you can disable some of its weapons if you hit it hard enough. Mechs are destroyed when the body is damaged enough. The detail here is nice. When a mech has damaged legs it will visibly limp and be much easier to hit.
Through the course of the game you can take lancemates with you, AI players who will aid you in your mission. You can give them orders easily with the F keys, memorizing these aren't too hard so it's easy to call your buddies to destroy the mech that's harassing you. The AI performed pretty well and I like that your lancemates gain experience in battle and will gradually become better pilots, gunners etc.
I was a little intimidated by the controls in the game at first, because of the ability to twist the torso. You get better at this in time, and it's an important ability to master as you can run circles around your enemy and make it fairly difficult for him to hit you. All the keys are customizable as you'd expect from any respectable game, I was happy with a layout similar to unreal tournament.
The game gets pretty difficult in the later levels (I played normal difficulty however, action beginners will of course want easy) but I loved the challenge. The only thing I am disappointed about is the lack of cash in the game. I played Mechwarrior games back on the SNES and they gave you cash based on your performance which you could spend on your mech. The story has a rebellion feel to it so the player is granted access to only what he finds on the battlefield. This is good for the story, of course but I like spending cash in games. Overall, Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance is a very enjoyable experience and I highly recommend it to action gamers and the lovers of huge machines. 9/10. Buy it here.
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