MechWarrior 3
Published By: Microprose
Reviewed by Atari
6/11/99
Article
Discussion Forum
First
Impressions:
I
should probably start of by telling you that I didn't play MechWarrior
2 and therefore didn't know what to expect. I wanted to get MW2,
but I didn't have a joystick at the time, and the one that I wanted
(the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro) was a little too expensive for
me back then. In those days, I still played Descent with the keyboard.
*cringe*
So what is MechWarrior 3 all about? Well, it continues on from MechWarrior
2 so it doesn't really explain to me who the bad guy is and why
he is so bad. In fact, from the campaign animation, it sounds like
my forces are the bullies who kicked the bad guy out to begin with.
The game doesn't even explain that you are the good guy. From what
I can tell, you are at war, you have BattleMechs (robotic war machines),
he has BattleMechs, you have invaded the planet he resides on, and
the battle is on.
You are a "lanceleader" or teamleader (well not initially, eventually
the rest of your team meets up with you) and must go out and destroy
the bad guy's mechs (which happen to be better built than your mechs).
This is not a problem because if you shoot down one of their legs,
you can capture one of their mechs. Not only that, but after a battle
you can salvage the goods off the field (such as weapons, ammo,
and other cool stuff). What you salvage depends upon what you had
destroyed when you killed an enemy mech (ie. If you blew up his
arm, you will have also blown up whatever weapon he had mounted
on his arm). This makes the game interesting because it never plays
the same game twice. I was playing at the same time as my boyfriend,
and we both had very different approaches to the game, which led
to us having different resources as the game progressed.
Graphics:
The
graphics looked really sweet. MechWarrior 3 has a nice 3-D engine,
I doubt you will be disappointed. It ran smoothy and beautifully.
I did however have to crank down my gamma in windows for my Voodoo2
because for some reason it was way too high up in the game. I
also noticed a bug, when going to my Voodoo2 display properties
after exitting MechWarrior 3, it would lock up my computer. *ugh*
In fact, I noticed several bugs.
Sound/Music:
I
liked the briefings/debriefings, although graphically they were
all presented in the same format, they caught my attention. I
attribute this to the voice in particular. Whoever they had hired
to say the lines did a good job. Usually in a game I get bored
of the monotonous briefings/debriefings and just skip over them
or read the text, but these actually made me sit down and listen.
Other than that, the in-game mech sounds were pretty good. Some
sound effects from the intro animation seemed pretty canned but
other than that I can't complain.
Gameplay:
The
storyline was good, a little more explanation in the beginning
would have been nice. The initial animation was entertaining but
the final animation was a real let down. After finishing all those
missions I really expected more out of the final animation, like
for instance what happens to me? What happens to the bad guy?
Etc. Give me an ending please! I deserve it. :) It could have
used a few more in-game animations too... like when you moved
on from operation 1 to operation 2 that would have been a good
place to stick an animation.
As far as the characters go, you really didn't have all that much
of a glimpse into the characters. This was not necessarily a bad
thing. You tend to relate more to the mechs you pilot than the
pilots themselves.
As far as the interface goes, they are missing what I consider
"standard" options in a game, such as the option to crank your
brightness up or down. It's a bit unclear how to turn off the
music also. When I finally did turn off the music, it would turn
it back on when I went on to the next mission. The interface could
have been a little more intuative.
The campaign was a bit short as well. Although some of the missions
were interesting, some of them were a little too quick. The tutorial
wasn't very good either. It wasn't till my 3rd try that I realized
what the tutorial wanted me to do.
Enjoyment:
Overall,
I was pleased with the missions. A lot of times I will play a
game that has missions that were thrown together instead of integrated
into the storyline. These missions actually seemed more tied together
than what I was used to seeing. What made this game not so fun
was the numerous bugs I ran into while playing it.
One of the bugs I ran into, was on Operation 2 Mission 4 I did
exactly what I was supposed to and I couldn't finish the mission.
I know I didn't forget anything because my boyfriend had finished
that mission successfully and he didn't do anything differently.
For some odd unexplainable reason, I was stuck at Op 2 Mission
4... and if you know what that's like, you know just how obnoxious
that is. Luckily, I just swiped my boyfriend's saved games and
continued on... this was however also annoying because in the
game you build up your mechs, and now I was stuck with his mechs.
I also noticed to my surprise that I would lose ammo and weapons
in my stockpile for no apparent reason. These kind of bugs can
really get on your nerves. At least they can really get on mine.
These are things they really should have fixed before releasing
this game.
Multiplayer:
I
got on MSN Gaming Zone and tried to play, however I couldn't.
I believe this could be due to the fact that I have ADSL, and
I go through a Linux box to get to the internet. So, bottom line,
I haven't been able to get it to work online. We did try playing
it over the LAN as well, but we couldn't get that to work either.
Looks like they needed to spend a little more time on the multiplayer
coding.
Speaking of multiplayer, one thing that I would have LOVED to
see in this game is the option to play co-operatively. The game
would have been perfect for it. However, for some strange unknown
reason they didn't think of this, and didn't implement it. *sigh*
Overall
Impression:
This
is a really nice looking, fun game. It could have been perfect
if they spent a little more time on it instead of rushing it out
the door. They didn't test it enough, and they didn't spend enough
energy and time with the multiplayer code.
Marketing
Efforts Towards Women:
They
marketted this fairly neutrally. They included in the intro animation
the idea that "men and women" are piloting the mechs. Also, one
of the 3 other people on your team is a female character, though
as I said earlier, you don't really get a chance to know your
team. So, overall, they have been marketing the game fairly genderlessly.
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