Mechwarrior, for SNES

Rating: 5.8/10; Average

Played: 2019

Mechwarrior is a first person shooter viewed from the cockpit of a walking tank (mech). The controls are fairly simple: “L” and “R” to switch active weapon, the 4 face buttons do: shoot, on/off jump jets, show map and one disables movement to instead allow you to move the crosshair. “select” does nothing however, which is a slight waste. Aiming is quite easy and there is a certain degree of auto aiming; a green box will highlight your target which will sometimes still allow you to hit them if your crosshair is not on them. This is important when the enemies fly around directly above you; there is no way to look up so you just have to shoot wildly and hope you hit them. There is some visual feedback when you damage an enemy as the part of them that you hit will glow briefly, but you cannot see this if the enemy is out of sight above you. It is also annoying that you will often hit the legs of the enemy when they are flying around. Both your mech and enemies have 2 arms, 2 legs and torso which can be separately damaged. Destruction of the torso = death, while losing arms removes weapons and losing legs prevents mobility. While these effects are interesting, it takes so long to destroy a limb that it is never a good idea to target anything other than the torso.

The enemies seem to gain more health as the game progresses, but their weaponry does not improve; they always only use machine guns and short range missiles. You never have to worry about seeing more dangerous weapons, yet this does not seem to affect their ability to tear through your health. There are only 4 types of enemies, yet they are all exactly the same with different levels of health and ground speed. I found it incredibly annoying that the heaviest mechs are not all the slower than the lighter ones, and actually seem to be better at flying. It does in some ways feel that the enemy mechs do not follow the same rules as yours. At the very least, it is a missed opportunity to create a variety of more specialist enemies that require specific tactics to beat efficiently.

Speaking of your mech, you can pilot the same frames as the enemies. The differences between these frames is not explained in the game, but seems to simply boil down to different max weight. Everything you put on your mech costs weight, and higher weight reduces land movement speed. It is up to you how to distribute that weight between the engine, jump jets (for longer flying), weapons, armor and heat sinks (mostly for flying but also needed for shooting laser weapons). Jump jets can allow you to go into the air to counter the enemies that go up but it is somewhat difficult to control and not really needed. Unfortunately, the design of the levels you have to play means there are only a limited number of viable set ups. I only found there to be 2 useful set ups: a speedy glass cannon that can outrun enemies and kite them around, and a heavily armoured juggernaught with lots of short range missile launchers for going toe to toe.

One good thing about mech customization is that armor, heat sinks and jump jets can be added and removed at no net loss of money; it costs X to put it on, and you get X back when you take it off. Nice and simple. This does not work with the engine and weapons though so you cannot freely swap things around. It is especially annoying that you cannot keep a stash of weapons in reserve for different situations, or switch them between different mechs. Worse, there is not good balance between the different weapons and very little tactical significance. Machine guns and the small and medium laser are useless. The large laser and particle cannon both outrange enemies and cost heat (effectively giving infinite ammo), but the damage is terrible. Missiles are the only way to deal decent damage, but they come with a limited ammo reserve which makes it quite possible to run out in a mission if you do not take enough. You will most likely not have enough ammo if you use anything other than the short range ones because the others come with less ammo. Actual combat comes down to moving the crosshair over the enemies torso and either repeatedly pressing “shoot” to fire your chosen weapon, or holding “shoot” to auto cycle between all of your weapons (which has the highest damage per second). In other words, backpeddle kite with your long range weapon until the enemy gets close and then spam missiles. There really is nothing else and this is a huge disappointment. There are no defense moves either, no strafing, no shooting down enemy missiles, no specific missile types (like anti air or anti ground), no huge bomb or nuke type for an emergency, no melee, no temporary buffs or debuffs. The combat in this game really is dull.

It is not helped by the fact that there are only a small number of maps to play on and that every mission is more or less the same. Most set you up against a number of enemies and task you with killing them all. Sometimes you have to get a random drop from one enemy, there are boss fights, and then there are the base missions. Attacking an enemy base is ridiculously easy because there is no possible way that the enemies will kill you or that you run out of ammo before the base is destroyed. There are no walls (the entire level is flat because this is not really a 3D game), no stationary defenses, nothing special. You would think that attacking a fortified position would be more difficult, but it is the opposite. So why even have this in the game? Even worse is when you have to defend a base and in this case the odds are so stacked against you that it is often impossible. Winning is more about trying over and over and hoping for the best. Hoping that the starting set up (which seems to be random) is better, than the enemy spawn order and placement is better and thatd when they decide to be annoying and fly above you is not enough to cause you to lose. Really winning is more about luck than skill, tactics or preparation and that is very bad game design. The final boss is also like this because he simply has higher stats than you.

Outside of the combat, you listen to dialogue to find out which planet to go to next. You can choose to do that or grind on random missions for money. Sometimes they give you a clue and make you figure out which planet is correct. You are also able to haggle for a higher fee for each mission. Sometimes I found it odd that you always get paid by the same organization for the missions even though the point of the story is that you are following your own agenda. The story, dialogue and setting are certainly interesting, but how you get missions could have used a larger variety.

Overall, Mechwarrior is a huge wasted potential of a game that has a good core but the meat outside that core is not well done. The lack of engaging tactical gameplay and excessive difficulty later on make the game not worth playing all the way through for most, but the early game is reasonably fun.