My 25 Favorite Video Games of All Time: #25 Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance

Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance (2000) PC

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.

Wait, did I forget to mention that you can target individual mech parts? I did, well you totally can! Sure, blasting an enemy in the cockpit will result in a kill, but its often the most armored section of the opponent and nothing short of launching Wolverine into the faceplate is will get a one hit kill. Instead, try blowing his less armored legs out from under him and laugh as your LRM totting teammate lobs fiery death at his immobile ass from across the map. I swear to the heavens, that some of the most imaginative, impromptu moments in my multiplayer history occurred in this one game.

Yes, he is indeed firing his lazors!

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.

My 25 Favorite Video Games of All Time: Introduction

Hello and salutations dear readers.

I had a conversation the other night over Twitter that really stuck with me for some reason. It was concerning Bioshock and if I made a list of my favorite video games, where exactly would it land. So I got to thinking, I say something is "one of my favorite games of all time" without actually having the physical list to reference. I don't think of myself as a liar, so I set out today to compile my favorite games on an easy to reference list.

While compiling the list, I found myself going over in my head just why this and that particular game has stood out in my mind for so long and I was soon fondly reminiscing back to the halcyon days of my youth and how these games have done so much to influence the person typing before you today. so along with each game, I'm going to share with you just why it has impacted me so.

Now to set a few ground rules.

1. This is the list of MY favorite games. If you find yourself disagreeing with me whilst clenching your fists in balled rage, that is to be expected. The world would be boring and very unsexy if it was populated by clones of me. If you feel you must express your displeasure at my obvious inferior list, please do so constructively. This is a labor of love, a celebration of what gaming has meant to me, and I intend to finish come hell or rampant trolling.

2. There will only be games I've played on the list. I'm sure Uncharted 2 was amazing and i'm a blind, unsexy fool to exclude it from the list. But poor, impoverished Joystik has never purchased a PS3 and therefore must be left out of all the swashbuckling fun. Regardless, if I haven't played it, It's not making the list. Sorry

3. I will try to keep it to one entry per series. I will tell you now that I fail miserably in this endeavor. There are 2 series that I just cannot ignore. To do so is betraying the integrity of the list and I would rather go back on a rule then to lie to myself.

4. Stories and plots can and WILL be spoiled. I will try my darnedest to throw up spoiler warnings before I reveal anything too critical but story is a major factor in whether or not I will like a game. and to not explain my feelings completely is doing a disservice to myself and the people reading *SPOILER WARNING* Darth Vader kills Dumbledore by throwing Keyser Soze at him during a dream sequence in the mind of an autistic child.

5. Format and Timeline  There will be a separate post per game and I'll try to have them up every other day. Real life does happen and sometimes I won't be able to post for a bit, but take heart lovely readers, I have every intention of finishing this list.

Now with all the nuts and bolts out of the way, we can proceed to the list proper. Look for #25 later tonight

Cheers

Joystik