Mechwarrior Online

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Created on Sunday, 17 May 2015 11:43

Written by KTP

Mechwarrior Online:  Because is perfectly reasonable to pay for a $500 mech skin.

Things are pretty shitty for fans of mech simulation games right now. Earthsiege and Starsiege aren't coming back. Hawken is now in the hands of Reloaded Games best known as the people that burned APB: Reloaded to the ground. Chromehounds stands as a remembrance of betters days while the abortion of the Kinect enabled Steel Battalion serves as an example of how not to fucking control a walking death machine. Seriously. Waving your hands around like you are doing the YMCA to move your mech is retarded. After the abrupt stop of Mechwarrior: Living Legends and MekTek losing the license rights for MW 4, the grand daddy of Mech games is still alive thanks to its loyal fanbase with Mechwarrior Online. I tried it a few years back when it was a buggy mess and jumped back in to see what changed. Is it worth getting? That depends. How much disposable income do you have?

Why the fuck do you have a HUD ontop of a cockpit view...ohfuckitnevermind.

The game itself turned itself around from a disgusting looking game that broke half the time to a game that would have been amazing in 2005 on your XP machine with an online store. Mechwarrior Online puts you in the seat of a giant mech with options for 3rd person and a cockpit mode. While there are capture the objective modes, it boils down to team deathmatch. With four different weight classes in mechs (light, medium, heavy, assault) you slam giant lasers, missles, bullets, etc into each other on a giant map in the slowest way possible. At the core, it's decent gameplay with a mixture of mechs and weapon combinations to learn and adapt to. There's enough options on the keyboard to warrant a simulation if even a basic one so taking your time through a quick tutorial and reviewing the key bindings is a must. For those jumping in for the first time, all mechs can take a hit and keep on going which could be a problem for twitch players. Veterans of the franchise will be sitting in a familiar chair.

You see this ugly trashcan piece of shit? It could be all yours for twenty bucks.

It should be stated that the game is not really pay to win, but the most glaring problem is the massive, and I mean MASSIVE, grind. As a new pilot, you get big bonuses for the time, kills, and other achievements in the form of C-Bills. Your first week should net you enough funds to afford a decent mech with some left over for a custom weapon system, but the law of diminishing returns come at you like a motherfucker. It leaves you on the side of the street with scratching your arms like a heroine junkie looking at the Premium store trying to justify spending $15 on a medium mech. You can grind your way to getting another mech, but the grind is one of the worst I have seen in a game without a premium account. I'm saying this also as a player of World of Tanks.

$500 fucking dollars right here. This is not a joke.

There's also the problem of the joke of faction warfare. Holy shit. Heaven help you if you dare pledge your loyalty to the Clans. Enjoy an ass-ton of light mechs rushing the objective. There is also no penalty for spawn camping and some of the maps do everything to encourage it. Faction Warfare is currently in beta and probably will be for some time seeing as how there doesn't seem to be a mad rush to fix the fucking thing.

Mechwarrior Online doesn't want new fans. There are packs going up in the hundreds of dollars for exclusive access and limited supply gold skins for upcoming mechs. They just want to keep milking the whales with dumb cosmetic shit and “exclusive” mechs that get released in batches. It's a disgustingly blatant cash grab and a complete letdown to fans of the series. There's a decent game underneath the bullshit but not enough to dig through to get it. Those looking for something new should steer clear and fans of Mechwarrior should just reinstall MW: 4.