Let me take you back in time.
Christmas day 2000. A 13 year old Joystik awakes from a night of fitful slumber to find a mountain of presents Ol' St. Nick has deposited under the plastic christmas tree. In a flurry of childish glee, I take to the wrapping paper like a honey badger to a delicious snake, ripping and tearing as fast as my pubescent arms could flail. It was quite the haul this year. New bike, CDs, anime, and Nintendo 64 games to beat the band. Just as I thought there was no more, my lovely mother drags a large wrapped box from the closet. My sister and I pounce upon the wondrous gift and shortly after, an HP computer, our first computer, is sitting before us. We carefully open the box and sitting inside is a copy of Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. My very first PC game.
Fast forward a few hours. My mother is finished setting up the blue and white behemoth and I get my first blurry glimpse into the wonderful world of PC gaming.
Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance is a First Person Mech Simulator game that drops you into Battletech universe, or more specifically, into the shoes of Ian Dresari, a mech pilot battling to free his planet and reclaim the throne from the evil Steiner forces.
I didn't play the game for the plot, though, there were some fantastically awful live action cutscenes. I played the game for the intense mech on mech combat. (that sounded dirty, don't look too much into that)
As a giant robot anime fan, I could not have asked for a better game. You are given access to a massive garage in which to build and customize your giant strolling death machine to your heart's content. Sure, you could always pick the stock, prebuilt machines, but the real fun was refining your bot to your own meticulous standards. Want a nimble machine loaded down with flak shotguns and short range cluster missiles to run circles around your opponent whilst blasting them to scrap, you can do that. Maybe you want a monstrosity encumbered with more long range missiles then most first world nations to sit in the rear and nuke everything to kingdom come? Go for it. Perhaps a shiny laser mecha that has enough firepower to blow a neat little hole in the moon? Shine on you crazy diamond. It is all left up to your imagination.
The insane customization is balanced by a comprehensive resource management system. You want that formidable laser mech loaded with beam weapons akin to a bipedal Death Star, well you better have enough heat sinks, coolant and power generators to handle the immense amount of heat being generated with each volley or you will be overheating in no time. I hope you packed enough long range missiles in that mobile Howitzer or you'll be nothing more than a 100 ton target dummy. It's really quite strategic and you must constantly weigh your options in the heat of battle.
The biggest challenge you'll encounter in the game, besides the extremely skilled competition, is the complex controls. you are literally piloting this robot and there is hundreds of input commands at your disposal. everything from simply controlling the speed, pitch and yaw of your mech to deactivating your electronic components to keep from being scanned to jettisoning fuel and excess armor for a last ditch speed boost. its all very confusing at first and is quite the steep learning curve to master. I recommend buying a flight stick peripheral and mapping the important inputs to the buttons.
Once you learn to control your battle machine like earth bound Amuro Ray, you have an extensive online multiplayer suite to explore. This was the first game I ever played online and it was quite an experience, even on my slow 56k connection. Many of the industry standards we see today were present: Team Death Match, Free-For-All, Capture the Flag just to name a few. The competition was absolutely cutthroat and having only text based communications made team matches a chaotic, but fun mess. After a few hours, you learn what style and techniques work for you and you start blowing mech arms off with the best of them.
When it is all said and done, Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance sparked my love of PC gaming and is a damn fine game in its own right. It's giant robot fighting at it's best and has more then earned a place on my list.
Stay tuned for #24 in a few days. Until then my friends, remember, you can never have enough heat sinks.
Cheers
Joystik.
