It's a hell **** to play online and it's free nowadays! Mechlab with tons of mechs and weapon systems, good online and a challenging campaign when you play in the Elite difficulty.
I LOVE the fact that the engine works this good, and I would be perfectly fine with it being used for the next 3 or 4 games....but they shouldn't be charging $50.
With such a popular franchise, you won't have much trouble finding a [multiplayer] game to join, and even practicing against the AI while you hone your skills is enjoyable.
I've just recently revisited this old gem, it was good part of my childhood which is why I took some time in my holidays to play it again, and there was still more to discover, since as I kid I didn't realize there was such a thing as branching missions and I didn't read any of the in-game news articles that could give me clues as to what the different progression paths were. Somehow even though I replayed it multiple times it seems like I took the same path every time. Now I do actually feel in touch with the story and reading every single news article in the game. Depending on what starting sponsor you choose the messages / news articles that you get will point you in different directions.
Furthermore, I'm not sure whether the reason that I took a different progression path this time is because i've changed as a person or if it was just because I actually read the damn text, a mixture of both I suppose.
I think a review in the year 2018, over 1½ decade after it's release, serves as a testament to the quality, especially immersion of this game. At all times you feel like you're truly a leader of a mercenary company, for me a lot of that can be attributed to the fully voiced missions, briefings and debriefings and the choices you have to make throughout. The wide variety of mech-types and the ability to comprehensively customize them, most of the characters that are voiced in the missions also sounds like they're really into their role. Unfortunately the vast majority of your crew only has two recorded voice lines, namely their death line and their reporting for duty line, but even those has a lot of character attached to them.
A big plus is also that the ambient music and sounds in the game are amazing, when you're not deployed in a mission it feels like you're in the midst of a command centre and listening to previously recorded mission audio logs, it can get repetitive though if you are having a hard time completing the game. When you are deployed in a mission the the mech speaks to you in an appropriately computer sounding voice about systems status (weapons, temperature, damage control and so on), and the weapons sounds authentic.
Something that I've come to realize when I played a newer installment of the BattleTech franchise which is MechWarrior: Online, is that I didn't enjoy the controls as much, for me it feels much more immersive using the control-scheme that is in the game by default, which is using the keypad to control the locomotion and firing angle of the mech you're driving. when I use the mouse it just doesn't feel like I'm controlling a machine of some kind.
The large variety of weapons and combat styles makes the combat experience in the game very satisfactory. and you've got great influence over how challenging you want the combat to be. Feels good when you land that perfect hit and then seeing your enemy's mech explode with blue light like you've destabilized a fusion reactor.
Story-wise the game seems like it has two moralities or two ways of life, that it is putting head to head against each other, on one hand honor and morality with feudal duty, and on the other hand opportunism and greed, depending on what type of person you are and exactly what progression path you took you will see which one you thought the game was best at selling to you, I think no matter what you do you will find that in the end your choices are meaningless in the context of the grand scale of existence. All the storylines ends with a cliffhanger, but a successor to this game is actually being released this year, I found that out when trying to fix this game to run on Windows 10. Perhaps the successor game will pick-up where this game decided to end it's story.
As a final note I want to point out that for some reason every game that has got a mix of metal (or hard rock if you prefer) and electronic in their soundtrack somehow just sticks with me, does anyone feel me there? Anyway, the soundtrack of this game is not one of the game soundtracks that I've put on my playlist, but it does fit the game quite well.
Verdict: 9/10 - A good childhood memory worth coming back to.
SummaryControl 100 ton 'Mechs while leading up to eight hired guns into the heat of battle in the quest for the all-mighty C-Bill in this latest standalone installment of the critically acclaimed MechWarrior action-simulator franchise. And this time around, honor doesn't even enter into the equation - it's all about the money. Get your fledglin...