Let's reminisce:
Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries.
Mechwarrior 3 and the expansion Pirate's Moon.
Mechwarrior 4 expansion Black Knight and Mercenaries.
Mechwarrior 2, Mercenaries 1996
You play as a mercenary mechwarrior where you are a gun-for-hire.
The intro.
Cockpit view in the intro.
In game cockpit view. Mucho difference.
Night mission. Can't see much. Lots of missions in MW2M suffers from poor visibility either from fighting in the dark or terrible weather conditions.
Good thing we have the handy infrared view, now we can see those choppers.
Image Enhancement view, normally not available as it is clan tech but you can add it in the game by editing the gamekey.map file:
Add the line:
ENHANCED_VISION w
I think the poor visibility detracts from the gameplay, playing too many missions with infrared or enhanced vision isn't that fun.
More bad visibility, sometimes you can't tell hills from the ground. Often I feel blind while fighting, once shooting using only the targeting reticle as I can't see the target due to poor visibility.
Weapons are poorly balanced in MW2, machine guns or heat weapons = win. AutoCannons(AC) are ammo-inefficient, SRMs are slow and each missile is fired one at a time. The sequels fixed these flaws. But homing non-streak SRMS in MW3?
Best part is that you can choose single missions, random missions and campaigns to earn those C-Bills which you use to buy mechs and stuff.
Some are mutually exclusive with alternate endings, campaigns usually have alternative missions if you lose missions.
In one mission you are hired to attack a rogue mercenary company where you can:
1: Attack the mercenaries and earn contracted pay.
2: Accept the mercenaries offer to betray your client and they double whatever you are to be paid.
3: Fail the initial campaign mission and you will find out that the mercenaries are actually raiding a cache of lost technology which you can now rob from them. You sell the loot for even more money plus you get some high-tech weapons. Sometimes it is better to lose missions!
Managing finances of a mercenary company.
You can hire mechwarriors and aerotech fighters to help you. You have to provide mechs for mechwarriors but aerotech pilots come with their own planes.
Kobayashi speaks Japanese and Engrish.
Shopping for mechs, equipment, weapons and ammo. Some of the quantities are not balanced. As you can see I am stocking up on LRM 20 ammo for future use. Advance weapons ammo like UAC5 has only 2 ammo per month making it useless at the rate AC ammo is consumed in MW2.
Customizing your mech is part of mechwarrior, you got to move those weapons from your arms (your arms tend to get blown off) and add ammo to those mechs with only 1 ton of AC ammo. Some of them have only have enough ammo to shoot for 5 seconds!
However, each critical slot you modify costs a whopping $50,000, moving a weapon from the arm to the torso costs more than the weapon itself! It can go over a million to modify a mech, making you less likely to fiddle with your builds, a bad thing as that is part of the fun of Battletech. But you will be swimming in C-Bills after the Solaris matches and can tweak all you want.
For those who have played P&P, you can recognise the mech silhouette.
Keeping up with the current events.
Mission briefing, the game comes with commentary from you or others, often with humorous albeit dark politicking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3GD0UnBCk
Bonus! Mechwarrior 2 intro. I watch this every time I play MW2.
Mechwarrior 3 and the expansion Pirate's Moon 1999.
The intro.
Cockpit view in the intro.
Actual cockpit view with HUD malfunction.
Pretty good graphic for its time. There are no night missions nor special vision in MW3.
Third person view, you can play MW3 in 3rd person, unlike MW2 where the cross-hair is missing.
This is the start of the expansion, Pirate's Moon. Finally we get night missions but we only have headlights.
The 3 vehicles here are your Mobile Field Base (MFB), they can be ordered to move via waypoints and they provide field repairs and rearmament. In 90% of the missions they will be there, I find that they disrupt the flow of the game.
You get salvage after missions, I wish we get more ammo, the lack of some types of ammo really limits the usage of many weapons. But you can replay missions with unlimited ammo if you want to try out gauss rifles or those UltraACs.
The mech customization screen where you can tweak your battlemechs.
One funny thing is projectile weapons actually shoot base on your mech momentum, so if you are running left, your AC actually shoots to the left of your cross-hairs, even against stationary targets. You can install the targeting computer which shows you the correct position to aim. So not only do you have to lead moving target, you have to take into account your own movements. I find it really odd that I have to lead a stationery target. :/
Mechwarrior 4 expansion Black Knight and Mercenaries 2000+.
In Black Knight you play the mercenary company "Black Legion."
In Mercenaries you get to choose 4 mercenary sponsors, each gives different advantages.
Intro for Mechwarrior 4. This is when live-action FMV is popular.
The expansion Black Knight intro/advert using the game engine.
You get to watch the cool Starship Trooper's style intro when signing up.
Cockpit view at night.
You get light amplification now. Yay!
3rd person view, my preferred view in MW4. I prefer 1st person for the other mechwarriors. Controls are really smooth in MW4, so much so that it feels like an arcade game. MW4 has the best weapon balance as well as UI.
In Black Knight you get to barter trade.
The mech customization screen. Now we get restrictive slots for weapons. Which is closer to the Battletech lore, in previous games it is like you have all Omnimechs instead of the restrictive Inner Sphere chassis.
MW4: Mercenaries lets you pick your missions. You get to travel planet to planet as well. The news update aren't that good in creating an immersive environment, just concentrate on bowing up giant robots and earn your pay and salvage!
You get to spend those mission pay on pilots, giant robots and big guns. My favorite is the Rotary AC2, it has long range, spews shells at an incredible rate, decent ammo efficiency, fairly light. Kills everything, dropships, choppers, tanks, assault mechs. Just don't hold down the trigger too long or it will overheat!
I'm with the Northwind Highlanders mercenaries, they give extra pay per mission.
You earn factions points as well as nobility and infamy depending on your missions, They have a minor effect on missions you get to choose. You can even fight in the arena and dedicate your victory to a house. But from what I know, having too high faction points is what actually restricts you from certain missions.
I love the arena play-by-play and commentary by 'Duncan Fisher', here are some bloopers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfR6w0ljrFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FayoajyRaKA
http://georgeledoux.com/pastclients/newpage/mechwarriormercena/
He also do other voices for the game, 18 of them!
Bonus intro for Mechcommander, 2:11 should be a Codex animated smiley.
Some comparisons.
Note: 1 lance = 4 mechs.
MW2Mercs: you get to control up to 2 lancemates including aerotech fighters.
MW3: 1 lance.
Mw4: 1 lance.
MW4Mercs: 2 lances!
MW2Mercs starts you with a single light mech but MW4 Mercs start you with a light lance and you quickly get heavies and assaults mechs. I prefer the slower and lighter progression of Mw2Mercs. 2 full lances isn't fun, bigger battles are less personal and you will hate customizing 8 mechs before each mission. You alternate between 1 and 2 lance missions but you still have to pay for the maintenance of the unused lance.
MW2 and MW4 have a big heat threshold. MW3 has a terribly small heat threshold.
MW2, if a mech loses one leg, it falls and is still in play and able to attack you if it has jumpjets. MW3, mechs go boom if one leg is blown off. MW4, mech walks very slowly if 1 leg is missing. Blowing both legs off kills mechs in 2 and 4.
MW2 and 4 lets you to assign a key to shoot weapon groups, MW3 only has fire current weapon group. MW4 is the only one that allows simultaneous firing of weapon groups as well as allowing a weapon to be in multiple weapon groups.
MW4 is the only one with lock-on for weapons not in your current weapon group. It also has the hardest lock-on mechanism, MW2 only needs the cross-hair to be near, MW3 needs cross-hair to be exactly on target has fast lock-on. MW4 is quite fast with BAP but terribly slow without.
MW2 AI is retarded as AI tries to shoot you even if there is a building between you. MW3: those MFBs will make you rage when they get stuck. MW4 your lancemates gets stuck all the time, halfway through a mission, you can suddenly find one of your lancemates missing.
MW, MW3 and MW4 has knockdown, it is very easy to topple mechs in MW3.
MW3 is the is the only one with continuous beam pulse-laser.
MW3, sometimes you will believe an APC can fly.
Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries.
Mechwarrior 3 and the expansion Pirate's Moon.
Mechwarrior 4 expansion Black Knight and Mercenaries.
Mechwarrior 2, Mercenaries 1996
You play as a mercenary mechwarrior where you are a gun-for-hire.
The intro.
Cockpit view in the intro.
In game cockpit view. Mucho difference.
Night mission. Can't see much. Lots of missions in MW2M suffers from poor visibility either from fighting in the dark or terrible weather conditions.
Good thing we have the handy infrared view, now we can see those choppers.
Image Enhancement view, normally not available as it is clan tech but you can add it in the game by editing the gamekey.map file:
Add the line:
ENHANCED_VISION w
I think the poor visibility detracts from the gameplay, playing too many missions with infrared or enhanced vision isn't that fun.
More bad visibility, sometimes you can't tell hills from the ground. Often I feel blind while fighting, once shooting using only the targeting reticle as I can't see the target due to poor visibility.
Weapons are poorly balanced in MW2, machine guns or heat weapons = win. AutoCannons(AC) are ammo-inefficient, SRMs are slow and each missile is fired one at a time. The sequels fixed these flaws. But homing non-streak SRMS in MW3?
Best part is that you can choose single missions, random missions and campaigns to earn those C-Bills which you use to buy mechs and stuff.
Some are mutually exclusive with alternate endings, campaigns usually have alternative missions if you lose missions.
In one mission you are hired to attack a rogue mercenary company where you can:
1: Attack the mercenaries and earn contracted pay.
2: Accept the mercenaries offer to betray your client and they double whatever you are to be paid.
3: Fail the initial campaign mission and you will find out that the mercenaries are actually raiding a cache of lost technology which you can now rob from them. You sell the loot for even more money plus you get some high-tech weapons. Sometimes it is better to lose missions!
Managing finances of a mercenary company.
You can hire mechwarriors and aerotech fighters to help you. You have to provide mechs for mechwarriors but aerotech pilots come with their own planes.
Kobayashi speaks Japanese and Engrish.
Shopping for mechs, equipment, weapons and ammo. Some of the quantities are not balanced. As you can see I am stocking up on LRM 20 ammo for future use. Advance weapons ammo like UAC5 has only 2 ammo per month making it useless at the rate AC ammo is consumed in MW2.
Customizing your mech is part of mechwarrior, you got to move those weapons from your arms (your arms tend to get blown off) and add ammo to those mechs with only 1 ton of AC ammo. Some of them have only have enough ammo to shoot for 5 seconds!
However, each critical slot you modify costs a whopping $50,000, moving a weapon from the arm to the torso costs more than the weapon itself! It can go over a million to modify a mech, making you less likely to fiddle with your builds, a bad thing as that is part of the fun of Battletech. But you will be swimming in C-Bills after the Solaris matches and can tweak all you want.
For those who have played P&P, you can recognise the mech silhouette.
Keeping up with the current events.
Mission briefing, the game comes with commentary from you or others, often with humorous albeit dark politicking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3GD0UnBCk
Bonus! Mechwarrior 2 intro. I watch this every time I play MW2.
Mechwarrior 3 and the expansion Pirate's Moon 1999.
The intro.
Cockpit view in the intro.
Actual cockpit view with HUD malfunction.
Pretty good graphic for its time. There are no night missions nor special vision in MW3.
Third person view, you can play MW3 in 3rd person, unlike MW2 where the cross-hair is missing.
This is the start of the expansion, Pirate's Moon. Finally we get night missions but we only have headlights.
The 3 vehicles here are your Mobile Field Base (MFB), they can be ordered to move via waypoints and they provide field repairs and rearmament. In 90% of the missions they will be there, I find that they disrupt the flow of the game.
You get salvage after missions, I wish we get more ammo, the lack of some types of ammo really limits the usage of many weapons. But you can replay missions with unlimited ammo if you want to try out gauss rifles or those UltraACs.
The mech customization screen where you can tweak your battlemechs.
One funny thing is projectile weapons actually shoot base on your mech momentum, so if you are running left, your AC actually shoots to the left of your cross-hairs, even against stationary targets. You can install the targeting computer which shows you the correct position to aim. So not only do you have to lead moving target, you have to take into account your own movements. I find it really odd that I have to lead a stationery target. :/
Mechwarrior 4 expansion Black Knight and Mercenaries 2000+.
In Black Knight you play the mercenary company "Black Legion."
In Mercenaries you get to choose 4 mercenary sponsors, each gives different advantages.
Intro for Mechwarrior 4. This is when live-action FMV is popular.
The expansion Black Knight intro/advert using the game engine.
You get to watch the cool Starship Trooper's style intro when signing up.
Cockpit view at night.
You get light amplification now. Yay!
3rd person view, my preferred view in MW4. I prefer 1st person for the other mechwarriors. Controls are really smooth in MW4, so much so that it feels like an arcade game. MW4 has the best weapon balance as well as UI.
In Black Knight you get to barter trade.
The mech customization screen. Now we get restrictive slots for weapons. Which is closer to the Battletech lore, in previous games it is like you have all Omnimechs instead of the restrictive Inner Sphere chassis.
MW4: Mercenaries lets you pick your missions. You get to travel planet to planet as well. The news update aren't that good in creating an immersive environment, just concentrate on bowing up giant robots and earn your pay and salvage!
You get to spend those mission pay on pilots, giant robots and big guns. My favorite is the Rotary AC2, it has long range, spews shells at an incredible rate, decent ammo efficiency, fairly light. Kills everything, dropships, choppers, tanks, assault mechs. Just don't hold down the trigger too long or it will overheat!
I'm with the Northwind Highlanders mercenaries, they give extra pay per mission.
You earn factions points as well as nobility and infamy depending on your missions, They have a minor effect on missions you get to choose. You can even fight in the arena and dedicate your victory to a house. But from what I know, having too high faction points is what actually restricts you from certain missions.
I love the arena play-by-play and commentary by 'Duncan Fisher', here are some bloopers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfR6w0ljrFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FayoajyRaKA
http://georgeledoux.com/pastclients/newpage/mechwarriormercena/
He also do other voices for the game, 18 of them!
Bonus intro for Mechcommander, 2:11 should be a Codex animated smiley.
Some comparisons.
Note: 1 lance = 4 mechs.
MW2Mercs: you get to control up to 2 lancemates including aerotech fighters.
MW3: 1 lance.
Mw4: 1 lance.
MW4Mercs: 2 lances!
MW2Mercs starts you with a single light mech but MW4 Mercs start you with a light lance and you quickly get heavies and assaults mechs. I prefer the slower and lighter progression of Mw2Mercs. 2 full lances isn't fun, bigger battles are less personal and you will hate customizing 8 mechs before each mission. You alternate between 1 and 2 lance missions but you still have to pay for the maintenance of the unused lance.
MW2 and MW4 have a big heat threshold. MW3 has a terribly small heat threshold.
MW2, if a mech loses one leg, it falls and is still in play and able to attack you if it has jumpjets. MW3, mechs go boom if one leg is blown off. MW4, mech walks very slowly if 1 leg is missing. Blowing both legs off kills mechs in 2 and 4.
MW2 and 4 lets you to assign a key to shoot weapon groups, MW3 only has fire current weapon group. MW4 is the only one that allows simultaneous firing of weapon groups as well as allowing a weapon to be in multiple weapon groups.
MW4 is the only one with lock-on for weapons not in your current weapon group. It also has the hardest lock-on mechanism, MW2 only needs the cross-hair to be near, MW3 needs cross-hair to be exactly on target has fast lock-on. MW4 is quite fast with BAP but terribly slow without.
MW2 AI is retarded as AI tries to shoot you even if there is a building between you. MW3: those MFBs will make you rage when they get stuck. MW4 your lancemates gets stuck all the time, halfway through a mission, you can suddenly find one of your lancemates missing.
MW, MW3 and MW4 has knockdown, it is very easy to topple mechs in MW3.
MW3 is the is the only one with continuous beam pulse-laser.
MW3, sometimes you will believe an APC can fly.
