The game world itself, as you know, is in 3D although some of the foliage does employ the use of sprites. Terrain is very well done with excellent placement of rolling hills and valleys, rivers, and forests. Naturally, it is highly advisable to use the terrain to your advantage and you’ll learn quickly that chokepoints and hills are your best friends especially when coupled with a mech that has sensor jamming capabilities. Nothing is more satisfying in MC2 than downing a lance of mechs and taking no damage from the encounter. Furthermore, being on higher ground not only means a larger field of vision for your mechs, but also an increased chance of inflicting headshots on enemies. The terrain however, has been compared with that of last year’s Ground Control and although MC2’s is much, much more vehicle friendly, MC2’s terrain textures appear to be slightly blurry and not too detailed. On the other hand, each of MC2’s maps comes highly populated with buildings and other doodads like capturable automated turrets that help decorate and make the world of Carver V come alive. A lot of attention was paid to the detailing of objects in the game, which are scaled to reflect the huge size of the mechs in the Battletech universe. The weapons effects are also extremely well done, and look convincing. Especially neat are the Matrix-like paths of gauss cannon projectiles as they fly through the air towards their targets. Missile freaks will love how missiles arc up into the air and dive down towards their targets leaving behind large smoke trails, just like what you would see in a typical sci-fi anime episode. And yes, the explosions are bright, big, and loud. However, all of these weapon effects and other graphical effects the game will definitely make your game take a noticeable hit in the framerate department however. Luckily it is possible to customize the amount of graphical detail you want in the game. Just don’t expect too much if your system just barely meets the minimum requirements. The game is definitely more optimized than in the beta, but it still needs some work. Sound wise, everything is great, from the pilot voices (which had more character than I expected) to the weapons sounds (some of which were used in Mechwarrior 4 it seems). The music adds quite a lot to the atmosphere as well, and changes along with the situation and you’ll definitely know when something is about to happen when the music suddenly starts getting tense and foreboding. Finally, the mechs themselves are well animated and it’s quite fun watching them walk about, fall over, get dismembered, or blow up. As mentioned in my preview, MC2 really does play like a miniature wargame come to life.
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Nowadays a review of any game isn’t complete without a mention about multiplayer aspects. Setting up a multiplayer game is a snap if you know the IP of a server or if you are hosting, but it’s somewhat more convoluted with the matchmaking service provided (Microsoft Zone). You actually have to exit the game and launch your internet browser in order to access the Zone, and it seems like all players huddle around on the Clan Server, rather than any of the other standard servers (which had 0 players in them). Once a map has been selected and the game parameters agreed upon, players purchase and modify their mechs as well as allocate pilots as in the singe player campaign. The only difference however, is that the pilots are all regular in rank and have different specializations than you’d expect them to have. Gameplay wise, everything is exactly the same as the singleplayer mode where you can capture turrets, resource point buildings, and call in support. In addition to the deathmatch “seek and destroy” objectives, maps can also be base capture maps, or “King of the Hill” maps. When things get hot though, framerates drop dramatically, even on a P3-866. Other opponents that I’ve played complained of the game becoming a slideshow, especially when the missiles start flying. Also, multiplayer games tend to favour slugfests with heavy mechs rather than balanced forces. To an extent, this can be controlled by drop weight and c-bill limits but I’ve observed that most players invariably go for the heaviest mech that they can get. In addition it seems that the key to victory for any map is to just get every mech in your unit to fire on a single enemy, which is actually a great tactic but it does get boring after repeated usage.
In conclusion, MC2 is a worthy sequel to the original. Admittedly, it doesn’t offer too much in terms of anything new over the original other than new support options and a better pilot experience model, but it is definitely more accessible to newbies and looks a lot better (although sometimes at the price of quite a few frame rates). The single player missions are quite fun (with all those different mission objectives available) and are never monotonous to play although better weapon balancing could have made the campaign a bit more challenging. The multiplayer experience for MC2 left me with a somewhat hungry feeling; there has to be more to multiplayer than focusing firepower onto one mech at a time. These points aside, fans of the original Mech Commander or of the Battletech universe in general should definitely pick this game up. For the rest of us, it is worth a look if you’re in the mood for some nice mech action and if you have the hardware for it.
Final Score: 85% for Battletech fans, 80% for everyone else
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