Page 81 - PC Gamer - UK (February 2020)

RE VIE W

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

only long-range weapons and encountered a professional game
continue circle-strafing an opponent with worse writing, dialogue, and
inside their minimum range. Enemies GUN SHOW Key to your mech strategies narrative design than MechWarrior 5:
can and will get stuck on terrain is balancing your weapon types Mercenaries. The characters are
features, requiring you to pick shallow and forgettable caricatures
through a whole city for one last, tiny and the plot a paint-by-numbers
tank before a mission can progress. revenge story. The few talented voice
Raids quickly became my actors struggle with the barren
favourite missions. They’re lightning- dialogue they’re given. The stories of
fast battles that require you to destroy prior MechWarrior games may have
a handful of specific targets scattered been FMV ham festivals, but at least
across a map. Things like radar AUTOCANNONS M ACHINE GUNS G AUS S RIFLES they had some heart, and BattleTech’s
Pinpoint accurate,
Light up
ACs deal more
stations or warehouses, usually. The damage for the unarmoured high range, high long history is rife with tales of
catch is that you’re only there to heat they generate. targets real good. damage and low star-crossed lovers and honourable
destroy those, then get out, and Watch out for the Otherwise, just heat. The mech space knights. You can’t watch the
you’re there to do it against silly range though.. don’t bother. sniper’s dream. MechWarrior 2 betrayal cinematic, or
numbers of defenders. Standing for a the MechWarrior 4 intro, and not
straight-up fight is likely to get you laugh. MechWarrior 5 made me feel
blown up, so I took delight in crafting absolutely nothing.
speciality formations of fast, tough This is honestly kind of amazing,
mechs geared to weave through cover as the missions have you commit
and smash objectives before casual war crimes quite often. Sure,
disappearing to other parts of the the civilian colony administrator is
map. The strategy worked especially FL AMERS L ASERS PP C s begging you to stop because there are
The Particle
Short range, but
Lasers do great
well in night fights and during they damage and damage for their Projector Cannon women and children in the buildings
weather events, when banks of raise your enemy’s weight, but they do fires a long range, you’re levelling, but at the end of the
swirling dust could shield my heat – slowing their generate a lot of high damage and a mission your coworkers just say
movements, or enemies’ long-range fire rate. heat, unfortunately. near-instant shot. something like, “Haha wow that was
shots were hampered by night vision a rough one we just did with the
mode. Customising mechs is superbly fusion flamethrowers on those
fun, and a variety of weird techs and schools and farms, let us collect our
mech variants show up, with more pay and never speak of this again”.
being added as the in-universe None of that is to even mention
timeline advances. Hunting down the bits of narrative that are entirely
rare mech or weapon icons on the nonsensical. A mission chain will first
campaign map is more fun than SRMs LRMs R ARE task you with covering a VIP’s escape
VARIANT S
Short Range
Long Range
pursuing the main storyline. Missiles deal a lot Missiles can lock on There are many from one location, and then ask you
The end of a mission is of damage, but are and fire at very benefits to using to fight a desperate rearguard as the
significantly less climactic. You don’t unguided and distant targets. these such as VIP’s ship is fuelled to depart…
desperately return to your drop ship inaccurate. Scouts help greatly. increased range. except that supposedly immediate
under the fire of its guns and up the follow up will be on a planet a month
ramp into the bay, you just fade to of travel away. This sort of mismatch
black at the exfiltration point. featured in a MW5 trailer. With it between description and events is the
Actually, drop ships don’t shoot at all, featuring so gloriously, so rule, not the exception. Perhaps most
aside from once during a cinematic in prominently, in the recent BattleTech glaringly, the item and mission
the tutorial. That’s a weird thing to tactics game, melee combat is sorely descriptions are riddled with errors
miss since MechWarrior 4 so missing from MechWarrior 5 too. and grammatical mistakes.
prominently and memorably featured Mechs going full tilt collide with a But MechWarrior 5 is a game that
the weapons on landed drop ships crash of screeching metal and… will get a pass on its narrative woes
and Piranha’s own MechWarrior awkwardly grind against each other. because the narrative is so thin the
Online had them as well.There’s also You start with a Centurion, a mech gameplay completely trumps it. MW5
just the one kind of with a prominent is unmistakably a game about being a
drop ship – the I took delight in claw-and-shield arm sandbox mech jockey and the stories
Leopard – and the for grabbing and are just a low-quality veneer over
iconic spherical variant crafting slashing – but that arm some superb robot combat. If you’re
don’t make an speciality just hangs limply. It’s a here for a mech smashing simulator,
appearance. formations of notable absence when this is the best new mech smashing

NO PUNCHING fast mechs every FPS for 15 years simulator around. Here’s hoping for
has included a token
more from a MechWarrior 6.
The drop ships aren’t melee attack.
the only bit of missing Of course, none of VE R D I C T
BattleTech lore that would make those relatively small problems are so Mechwarrior 5:
Mechwarrior 5 feel more complete. bad that they ruined MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries is here to
Infantry and aerospace fighter as a mech combat simulator. What serve as a showcase 80
attacks are also absent – infantry could have is the writing. I cannot of nostalgic and joyful
conspicuously so since foot soldiers remember the last time I mech combat.

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