Being the mecha fan that I am, I naturally lept at the chance to fiddle around with the new expansion for MechWarrior 4. This new expansion, called Black Knight, is done by Cyberlore Studios, the folks responsible for the development of the RPG classics Dark Queen of Krynn and Al-Qadim (while teamed up with SSI) as well as the RTS classic WarCraft II and more recently, Majesty and its expansion. With so many notable games under its belt, Cyberlore would appear to have the necessary expertise required to create a good expansion for MW4, which was probably one of the best games of 2000-2001.
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Black Knights story picks up the right after the events of MW4. While doing routine mercenary missions (i.e. clearing out pirate scum) your mercenary company is hired by House Steiner to quell the rebellion on Kentares IV and defeat Ian Dresari. Sensing that a lot of money could be made doing this, your mercenary company decides to go along with this and starts hitting the Dresari forces. In a surprising turn of events however, it turns out that Dresari himself is facing a rebellion from his own people who suspect him of murdering his own sister
Most of BK isnt really different than MW4 as you still control the lumbering mechs that are native to the MechWarrior universe. There are some obvious changes however, first and foremost being that you can buy parts off of a black market. Unfortunately, you dont appear to earn credits per se in every mission but with the black market you can trade in your unwanted salvage to get something that you want (like Clan ER Large Lasers for instance). There are of course, five new mechs that come with the expansion pack. These are the Black Knight, the Sunder, the Ryoken, the Uller, and the Wolfhound. Of the five new mechs I think the Ryoken and the Black Knight are my favourite additions to the MW4 stable. These mechs not only pack a good punch, but also manage to be quite nimble. The other mechs are decent additions, but I think Cyberlore should have chosen other mechs that were both aesthetically pleasing and functional. I think the only complaint that I have about the new mechs is their number, which could have been a couple more. The new enemy vehicles (i.e. cannon fodder) that are included in BK arent too deadly on their own, but when they swarm at you like a cloud of flies, they can prove to be somewhat more than an annoyance, especially when youre fighting enemy mechs at the same time.
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In addition to these, there are a couple of new weapons, five new multiplayer modes, and a dynamic campaign. The newest additions to the armoury at your disposal include a new beam weapon, a new indirect fire weapon, and a couple of autocannons. I found that in the single player game, the X-Pulse Laser wasnt really all that special since the AI enemies can still be easily dispatched with a couple of ER Large Laser barrages. However, in the multiplayer games that Ive played they tend to dominate the matches because of their high damage coupled with their ability to knock around opponents. The new indirect fire weapon, the Cluster Bomb, is not only hard to use, but is designed primarily for anti-vehicle firepower in the single player game, which makes them virtually useless in multiplayer games. The new autocannons that are provided dont really feel all that different to the ones that originally came with the game, either.
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