[b]BattleTech[/b] is one of the Seven Wonders of the Video Gaming world--its massively expansive lore, attention to technical detail, and potential narrative space is right up there with Warhammer 40K or Star Wars.
[b]MechWarrior Clans[/b] is a garish, bloated Tour Guide service operating out of an over-perfumed, rickety van, driven by an obnoxious, self-important local who cannot fathom that [i]he[/i] isn't the reason you booked the tour. The owner hasa exclusive rights to take all the tourists to see the 7th wonder, so it's the only show in town. No matter how uncomfortable the seats in the van; how loud and grating the ethnic music is, being played over tinny, blown out speakers; how bad the tour-guide's breath and off-color humor is... you're going to take the tour.
That's the analogy I dreamt up while playing through mission after repetitive mission in MW: Clans. I was having a blast. [i]I love [b]BTech.[/b][/i] The central gameplay loop of tinkering with your mechs to cobble together your favorite build, and then stomp around, blasting the arms and legs off of your opponents is just so good. It's a uniquely satisfying gaming experience. There's just nothing like taking down an Assault mech with one or two alpha-strikes, fired directly into the cockpit. BattleTech is awesome.
It's just everything else that sucks.
- The Mission Design is best described as absent. By the 20th time my squad landed just far enough away from the action that all of the exposition could be dumped over the comms before it was possible to engage with the enemy, I was rolling my eyes. It is frustrating beyond description that the next batch of enemies only spawn once you hit the nav point. There is no possibility of tactical or strategic engagement. The enemy literally isn't there until you've stepped on the big, yellow spawn button. The sheer number of enemies and the unpredictable frequency--or even presence--of ammo caches or repair stations, coupled with how [i]utterly[/i] useless your NPC squad mates are, makes Energy weapons mandatory.
- I'd like to comment on the story, but my game reliably crashed during every cutscene after the first act, so I was forced to skip them all. The snippets of "story" in the mission briefings were comically shallow, and the banter between the characters in-mission can best be described as "people I don't care about saying things that don't matter." I think the greatest disappointment is that just about everything interesting in the game seems to happen to someone else. The only narrative award Jayden, the "protagonist," can win is "Attendance." This problem was [i]most[/i] clear at the end of the first chapter, when the big, climactic final fight between your squad and the pirate king you've been chasing for 8 missions takes place [i]in a cut scene.[/i] Oh, and by the way, you and your squad aren't in the fight. Your commander, whose name I couldn't remember and had been on screen maybe once before, gets all the glory.
- The AI is bad. It's been bad since MW5. It is nominally functional, and nothing else. Enemy mechs run directly at you and shoot their guns. That's it. Doesn't matter if you and your squad is in 500 tonnes of Death Machine and the enemy is a 30 tonne KitFox. It'll run right into the middle of your squad and stand there, shooting its small lasers.
- I was openly infuriated by the presence of all of the DLC mechs in the Marketplace, even though I don't own the DLC. It was a grotesque reminder that this game's primary purpose is to sell BTech to all of the BTech whales.
- The Menus are low-effort and clunky. Not once did it make sense that I had to leave the Mech Bay to go to the Science tab, to open the Chassis Milestone screen to unlock the mech XP to be spent in the other menu called Chassis Upgrades. Shouldn't all of that be available in the Mech Bay?
- All of the Experience systems are dumbfounding and dumb. What in the world is the point of letting you 'level up' a mech chassis, when you are absolutely guaranteed to be discarding it one or two missions after gaining enough XP to be meaningful? The inexorable forward march of Mech tonnage makes it absolutely, totally pointless to get attached to any mech lighter than 100 tonnes--and even then, I think I got 2-3 missions in my Dire Wolf with maxed Chassis Upgrades. And the Pilot level up system??? I don't know if I've engaged with a less satisfying, less impactful progression system in memory. It could be completely removed from the game and I wouldn't notice.
- It is baffling to me that all at once the game strips away the deeper, more complex elements of BTech to "streamline" the experience for new players, while doing absolutely nothing to tutorialize any aspect of Mech Construction or Clan lore. Who is this game for? I understood all of the Clan jargon because I've read the Jade Falcon trilogy and the first few books of the Twilight of the Clans. But would someone new to the BTech mythology have any idea what a Sibkin is? Every aspect of the game felt like it was a hackneyed attempt at appealing to a broader audience, while disregarding the knowledge and experience of the core audience.
[i][b] . . . le sigh . . . [/b][/i]
Back to my 7th Wonder analogy: are you going to have a good time visiting the Pyriamids of Giza or the Great Wall of China? Yeah, of course you are. Are you going to enjoy it [i]in spite[/i] of how ugly, obnoxious, and self-obsessed the tour service is? Also yes.
I'm frustrated and sad that PGI does such an awful job with the MechWarrior license. I am forced to only imagine how truly great a MechWarrior game would be if it were competently crafted.
