Your futuristic fire truck is no match for my giant death robot!
It was hard to come by for a while, but MechWarrior 4 was re-released as part of a promotion for creator Jordan Weisman's and Piranha Games' first attempt to resurrect the series back in 2009. It's still available for free on Mektek.net, and if you have the patience to play with some torrents and a simple sequential patching process, you can get it up and running in no time on a Windows 7 machine. And you should.
Mercenary Attitude
MechWarrior 4 is the definitive MechWarrior game on PC, because it so perfectly combines the BattleTech fiction with good mission design, a strong player-driven story, and controls so convincing that you would almost swear your desktop really is bolted into the cockpit of a 75-ton Mad Cat.
I may've bitten off more than I can chew here.
Learning to surgically cripple enemy Mechs rather than blast them to smithereens, is an essential skill.
One reason the campaign is so damned addictive is that it combines unlocking mechanics with looting. You command a small band of mercenary MechWarriors, starting out with nothing but crummy light 'Mechs and third-rate weaponry. Each contract can pay millions of credits, but your operating costs quickly ramp up into the millions as well. Your real source of profit (and new equipment) is battlefield salvage, so learning to surgically cripple enemy Mechs rather than blast them to smithereens, is an essential skill -- and you might even find that Mech and its weapons have been added to your arsenal after the battle. A lot of them are junk, fit only for quick sales, but they enable you to buy better Mech chassis and high-end equipment for your A-list Mechs. These helicopters just learned why the Mech is the king of battlefield.
It's not just stat buffs, either -- these weapons and Mechs really do feel different. The Extended Range Particle Projector Cannon (ER PPC) changes your decision making by letting you shoot from absurdly long ranges, if you're a good enough marksman. The sheer number of equipment combinations available means I've spent half my time just customizing my Mechs, trying to balance firepower with speed and armor, while staying within the constraints of each Mech's weight limit.
Bet Your Shiny Metal Ass
The flip side of all this customization is that combat feels much, much riskier. It's not just about completing the mission, but completing it profitably. When an enemy Mech blows away your expensive LBX Autocannon 20 (think Big Bertha turned into a giant shotgun and mounted inside a robot's arm), that's a fortune in credits that just got destroyed. When a member of your merc unit punches out as her Thanatos heavy Mech explodes, that Mech is gone from your inventory, along with everything you put inside it. Good luck recouping those millions of credits' worth of lost equipment.
This is the lemonade stand game with lasers and multiple rocket launchers.
It's as much a combat game as it is as small-business management sim, the lemonade stand game with lasers and multiple rocket launchers. If combat attrition puts the squeeze on your bottom line, the setting provides even more risks and opportunities. MechWarrior 4 takes place in the early stages of the FedCom Civil War, a long-overdue showdown between Prince Victor Steiner-Davion and his murderous, treacherous sister, Katrina. BattleTech fans had been waiting for this to happen for years, and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries was a way to participate in the action. You start out neutral, and as the war heats up, you get more contract offers from each side. But as your second-in-command warns you, nobody is going to be able to stay neutral forever.It was a tough battle, but check out that sweet sweet salvage!
You face other choices about how you get your payday. I started out doing jobs that were outright banditry, and I started winning an infamous reputation. Then I took my stolen riches, bought a fancy medium Mech and some good weapons, and went to Solaris (BattleTech's Atlantic City) where Mech combat has replaced boxing. I won a few matches there, bought my comrades some better gear, and went back to banditry.
Run Silent, Run Deep
Unfortunately, I went back to that well one time too many. I walked my troops into an ambush, finding not a poorly defended convoy but a lance of four heavy Mechs, another lance of four scout Mechs, and a lot of tanks. We had to shoot our way out of the ambush and then withdraw to an evacuation zone, and that sequence had me doing things I'd never contemplated in a MechWarrior games before.
MechWarrior 4 really does factor in what kind of sensor and electronic countermeasure package you run during battle.
I shut down my sensors, a making it hard for enemy Mechs to spot me at long range. Then I played hide-and-seek around hills and small gulches, emerging for a few seconds at a time to snipe at our pursuers and hopefully get them away from my comrades. It didn't work that well -- most of my lance was destroyed and one of my pilots died -- but it at least enabled me to escape to fight again. Scenarios like that prove that MechWarrior 4 really does factor in what kind of sensor and electronic countermeasure package you run during battle, making it feel like all my preparation pays off.Intelligence Required
There are other cool toys lurking in the optional equipment tables for your Mech -- toys that really only work in multiplayer, because the AI really isn't smart enough to use them effectively. Take the Narc Beacon, which acts as a homing beacon for friendly missiles. Tag an enemy Mech with one, and your lancemates can open fire with notoriously inaccurate Long-Range Missiles and still be guaranteed some solid hits. The IFF Jammer spoofs your opponent's targeting computer so that you appear as a friendly until you close inside a certain distance. Computer opponents seem to ignore it, but it would be cool to see in a multiplayer match.
Night vision is great except when bright explosions happen. Which is frequently.
MechWarrior 4 is a sophisticated simulation of imaginary machines that will never exist (because let's face it, it's kind of preposterous). But with all its attention to detail, cool gadgets, and the sense of events happening outside your missions, MechWarrior 4 makes them feel real. To succeed at piloting and commanding them, you need to be part businessman, part tactician, and part joystick jockey. Playing MechWarrior 4 today isn't just a nostalgia trip to the era when my flight stick never left my desk, it's a reminder of everything I loved about this techno-feudal universe in the first place, and why I've been dying to return. And perhaps most importantly, it's a road map for future MechWarrior games.