MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries

Rating:
Summary: Great game
Review: Mechwarrior 2:Mercenaries is the very first game I've ever played in the series, long before I started reading any of the books. Needless to say I was unfamiliar with the whole plot.
Mw2:Mercs puts you in the cockpit of awesome, powerful, 80-ton humanoid warmachines with enough firepower to level a city.
This is one of the few fps games that kept me glued to the monitor from beginning to end. Well worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Mechwarrior Game ever!
Review: Sometimes I feel the urge to play an older game. I don't know, it's just that today some of the titles require such high-end stats and make you wade through more menus that I yearn for the days of old when games were just much more straightforward. In addition there's just not that many single-player games in production these days and I remember a time when it was the single-player mode that a game was rated by, multi-player being more of a novelty.

Mechwarrior II:Mercenaries is a reasonable translation of tabletop BattleTech to computer gaming. I say "reasonable" because there are finer nuances that have been altered to make the computer gaming experience more palatable. More on that in a second, let's give this game it's due. Building on the slightly older Mechwarrior II and expansion pack this game gave you the viewpoint of the Inner Sphere (IS) domains. Coincidentally most BattleTech players I've ever dealt with play IS in one form or another, and so the first Mechwarrior II, while pretty, seemed a little odd. No Mechwarror game since this one has covered the Clan Invasion of 3051 and it's a crying shame, more classic combat scenarios came out of that era than any other, hands down.

You start out as a mercenary commander (your CO blown away in the awesome, totally BattleTech inspired intro). Over the years you acquire better Mechs and weapon systems, salvage partially destroyed equipment (and even more Mechs), and spend your money wisely upgrading. You can also hire up to 2 Lance mates, although as a BattleTech purist I really would have liked to have had 3, a Lance being 4 Mechs in number. You can also hire a single Aerospace fighter or bomber pilot, flying the classic 3025 models (Stukas, Lucifers, Corsairs, and more). As the game progresses your stature and fame in the IS grows, until strange stories come from the Periphery of a marauding army of souped up Mechs destroying all in thier path. In one of the most memorable game sequences I ever played (ever, to this day) you escape with some Periphery pirates (common enemies make strange bedfellows, eh?) and flee in a stolen Pegasus Light Hovercraft to a perfectly taut soundtrack.

The cutscenes were wonderful and the game exudes pure BattleTech. The new Mercenaries captures a lot of the dynamics of running an independent mercenary company in the BT universe but just doesn't take it from this era, which is a shame.

This game, good as it is, still has some flaws. If you flip through your 3025 manuals you'll see most of the Mechs are here, save for a few notable ones like the Rifleman, Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk, and my favorite, the Hatchetman. My understanding is there is an ongoing licensing problem with some of these designs, basically carbon copied from the RoboTech universe. Weapons don't seem to do as much damage, but I understand that's a necessary evil of the design. On a tabletop the average life expectancy of some units isn't even a full minute, and so while you may expect to obliterate that unwary Commando with your AC20 in one shot it's a little dissappointing to see it take up to 3. Your Lance members oftentimes don't know where they're going, although admittedly they can hit thier targets. The vaunted Aerospace Pilot works for only a few missions and then simply ceases to work, simply hovering in place over the battlefield, regardless of how many times you tell him to attack. And I won't lie, there are a number of impossible missions that will have you scouring the web looking for invulnerability cheats, the first and foremost on my mind being the set of missions on the ice freighter.

This game was so good though, the soundtrack was absolutely incredible, the graphics for it's day were great, that I simply cannot give it anything less than 4 1/2 stars. My hat's off to FASA, Activision, and Hanse Davion. Miss ya bud!

Rating:
Summary: Better than any other game I have
Review: The beginning movie is very interesting for me. This mech pilot and the mech try and get back into the dropship, and they either die, dropship leaves and the mech dies, or that the mech gets on, I am not telling you the way it ends.

Gameplay
When you first begin, choose a name, there, then comes some a letter from the mech who just died. Later on you get information. You board the dropship, go to different planets, see your missions (or choose your contract in mech commander or whatever it is called). There are over 10 missions (forgot to count how many), with 4 arena missions where it is 3 against 1. There are mechs, ranging from 1 ton to 100 tons. Different weapons for usage, limited ammo for most.
Pros of this gameplay is that you get to customize and choose your mechs and teammates and formations and such. There are missions like search and destroy, recon (I never figured out what to do), escort, and defend.

Sound
This is either what I call an advantage or disadvantage. When you aren't battling, you keep hearing the sound of the object rotating which can lead to it being annoying. Battling, hear your mech start up, walk, launch missiles (same noise), and projectiles and jumpjets (projectiles don't have as good of a sound as missiles)

Controls
Aren't that many controls. Jumpjets, arrow keys, full scale attack, attack, etc. They are customizable, and simple to learn.

Mechs
Some mechs are annoying, some are not (can't stick some good weapons on it). What I usually do is take out everything Kodiak (the fastest 100 ton mech in the game) has like weapons, and replace them with Ultra A/C 20 (major damage!). Naga, a mech you can only use in battle mode (1 mission, practice), is equipped with arrow IV missiles (take a long time to reload, don't know if it is worth the time). There are other mechs like Awesome, Urbanmech, jagermech, you get the picture.

Cons:
Sound needs work
The background (wish it keep extending)
If you love this, the aftermath and information (about 3 long paragraphs)
The information when you dock
graphics need a bit work (it is good since it has been out for over 5 for me when I got it)

Pros:
The missions
The mechs
The weapons
The controls

I would recommend this game, and I never did buy this game, it came with my computer I bought 5 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Better than any other game I have
Review: This games just about has all a robot game needs. This game is loads of fun. I never get tired of playing this game. If your looking for an action pack game Mechwarrior 2: Mercenares is that game!

Rating:
Summary: Cool and tons of fun!!!!!
Review: This games just about has all a robot game needs. This game is loads of fun. I never get tired of playing this game. If your looking for an action pack game Mechwarrior 2: Mercenares is that game!

Rating:
Summary: Best Mech game ever!
Review: This is the best of the mechwarrior series. I own them all, so shouldn't I know? You get to choseyour career as a commander for a mercenarie unit, or join someone else's. Then you sign contracts to get your missions. I'd nominate this game for "Best PC Game"...but I can't.