Mech Warrior 4: Mercenaries
by Microsoft
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Video Game Reviews of Mech Warrior 4: Mercenaries
Customer Review: The most expensive mission pack yet!
Summary: 2 Stars
It seems like the folks at Microsoft have decided to squeeze every possible nickel out of diehard MW fans, without really giving them much in return. Given the outageous price, the cheesy intro, and the dubious claim of 50 new missions (15 of them are just arena matches, and many others are "recycled" to pad the total number), the emphasis is clearly on getting as much money as possible, with minimal coding and design time. If this is all we have to look forward to, RIP MW saga.Little if any work seems to have gone into updating a rather dated graphics engine. A few more detailed skins, and "new" hw that's really just minor tweaks of the old hw, doesn't impress much. In fact, the engine is a bit more sluggish - I can easily play Vengeance and Black Knight at 1600x1280, Mercenaries is often choppy even at 1280x1024.
The missions are nothing special. They all seem to be either incredibly easy, or else 4 to 1 odds slugfests, without much middle ground. Very few offer any opportunity to choose your tactics and improve the odds, and the only real thinking the game requires seems to be aimed more at Business majors than gamers. As for having 8 mechs, ok, so now I have even more people getting in my way and not doing what I told them to. Big deal.
One continuing annoyance - the interface for working with mechs and missions is as pathetic as ever. I guess "real programmers" don't do menus?
All in all, Mercenaries is little more than a highly overpriced mission pack - and frankly, the missions in Black Knight are a still lot more fun. It's time for Microsoft to stop milking this game, and actually improve it. When you finish Mercs, there's a very strong hint that a mission pack is in the future. After spending fifty bucks on this one, I'm not sure I'm interested.
Customer Review: Dated but awsome game.
Summary: 4 Stars
One of the first indications of the quality of Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries is the opening movie. No it's not some slick CGI that we are used to, but a mix of canned gameplay footage with a good voice over telling the player next to nothing about what is going on. It sounds good, and looks good enough, but for an opening movie I would expect more. This sums up the overall game. It's great in it's own way, but is lacking the polish that we have come to expect. That said, the actual game is great fun and it's one solid experience. If only we did not have to wait for 2 years to get it.The single player campaign is interesting but short. It balances between giving the player a lot of freedom but not total control. This way the player can still make choices but still has to work towards "unlocking" the next set of missions. The missions them selves range from the standard search and destroy, defend the base and escort the convoy. But to mix it up you can often take the other side in the conflict. For example, one mission will have you defend the peace talks between two warring governments. At the same time there is another mission that will have you instead attack the peace talks. You cannot do both and the results are different. Or you can just leave the planet and go on to another contract. It's fun to go back and see the different outcomes.
The economy from Mechwarrior2 Mercenaries is back and works well. It adds another layer of depth and strategy that also helps make you feel like a mercenary. However unless you are a really bad Mechwarrior that loses Mechs left and right, you will never really be hard pressed for cash.
Of course you will have to keep your unit well armed with the cash you earn with various Mechs. The selection of Mechs is impressive, and I really enjoyed some of the new designs. Some of the old ones have gotten a nice face-lift with higher detail and higher res skins. There is an equally large selection of weapons and many of them have been revised in some way. The autocannons have new sounds, pulse lasers fire faster, etc. Fortunately the balance has been kept. All this helps inject some fresh interest in a game that is now 2 years old.
However that is where the game is weak. The engine used is getting old. This is the first Mechwarrior game where the graphics have been less than state of the art. The developers promised that they were just now able to use the full potential of the engine. But it is still a far cry from competing with he latest Unreal and Quake powered games. That said, the graphics are at least good enough. Only in a few areas does the game really look bad. It does manage to look improved over Mechwarrior4. It has lots of nice particle effects and better textures. The Mechs still look pretty good and the sound is well done. However the simple water effects, plain skybox, elementary lighting, crude damage decals, and 2D tress all tell of an engine past its prime.
The game does a few things that previous Mechwarrior games never did. Such as giving the player command of 2 full lances (8 Mechs total) rather than the usual four Mechs. The pilots are rather generic but they at least have distinct voices that give you some illusion of character. The voice acting through out will not win any awards but does a good job of creating atmosphere that is just right for a Mechwarrior game. There is also more story content told by text in the form of news reports that help flesh out the story. This is a welcome change from Mechwarrior 4s silly little live action clips.
In the end if you are a Mechwarrior fan than this game should at least entertain you. Anyone familiar with the Battletech story line will be glad to see some important characters and planets later on in the game. But just don't expect Mechwarrior5 or anything too impressive from the engine. If you can look past that, the experience is well worth the money.
Customer Review: DOES NOT INCLUDE MECH PAK MECHS!!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Great game but it DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MECHS FROM EITHER OF THE MECH PAKS ("Clan" and "Inner Sphere") as suggested by:"A gamer from Mobile, Alabama United States."
I bought the game after reading that review and WAS REALLY TICKED WHEN I REALIZED THAT HE WAS _WRONG_!!!! CHECK YOUR FACTS BEFORE YOU POST HERE!!
Customer Review: Pretty Good
Summary: 4 Stars
Bought this yesterday, played for a few hours...I'm a big Mechwarrior series fan, I ve been waiting for this one for a while. Overall, this is a very good game, but it has pro's and cons. I liked the addition of the money management, it's not enough to just slap a bunch of big weapons onto the mech - you have to be able to afford it. You also have to pay your lancemates, and they all require different salary (BTW, you get what you pay for). Fixing your damaged mechs also costs money(surprise!), as well as traveling from planet to planet. The tournament single player missions are also kinda cool, but don't expect a large payout - after winning the tournament my mech was so badly damaged that prize money was less than what it cost to fix it.
Now the bad: I guess I just expected a new Mechwarrior game, which this isn't. It should have been marketed (and priced) as an expansion pack. The terrains and environments are nothing special, actually the jungle is quite annoying, you have to blow up most of the trees before you can get a shot at your opponent. Nothing has been added to the gameplay itself (but nothing lost either).
The bottom line: If you are a die-hard fan of the Mech series (like me) or you never played Mechwarrior before, get this one. Otherwise wait for the price to come down a little. (I don't think expansion packs are worth $50)
Customer Review: mw4.mercs
Summary: 5 Stars
The MW4.Mercs has 42 mechs,this includes the mechs from vengance,black knight and the add on packs.The requirements to run this game are at the microsoft mercinaries web site.with 32 bit graphics the game should be very good.As far as game play goes,gone are the days of blowing the enemy mechs up to get salvage,with mercs you'll have to disable them to get salvage.