PC Review

MechWarrior 3 is the fourth title in the highly successful MechWarrior series, and boasts many enhancements over MechWarrior 2 and its quasi-sequel, Mercenaries. However, there are parts of MechWarrior 3 that just do not seem to be up to par.

I love BattleTech. There's just something about piloting a huge robot and blowing the heck out of other ones that draws me. So it was with great enthusiasm that I placed the CD in my drive, grinning widely and knowing that if the actual game was anything like the demo, it would be totally terrific. Installation proceeded without a hitch, and I was ready to jump in and start playing.

The introductory movie was fairly good, not the best I have ever seen, but quite good in its own right. The interface screen is very straightforward, offering Campaign, Training, Instant Action, Multiplayer, and Options. The moving background is slightly disorienting, but is easy to get used to. An option to turn it off would have been nice, however.

The Options button leads to a host of graphical, audio, and input controls. Graphical control is highly detailed in MW3, allowing those with Direct3D cards to even select the size of the textures to be used with the game from 2 MB, 4 MB, and 8 MB textures. Resolutions range from 320x240 in software mode to 1024x768 in Direct3D mode. The controls of the game can be customized, but not to the same extent as in MechWarrior 2, where almost every control could be switched. The interface for customizing controls is clean and intuitive. MW3 supports mouse / keyboard, and joystick / keyboard combinations.

The Training missions are fairly decent, and do a good job of teaching one how to control their big, unwieldy 'Mech. The combat training could have used a mission against a live opponent, however. Instant Action allows the choice of four maps and six types of missions, allowing for a lot of playability.

Playing the Campaign is like immersing yourself in one of the BattleTech novels. MW3 takes place around the time Clan Smoke Jaguar is utterly defeated by the Inner Sphere, and Victor Steiner-Davion has gone to Strana Mechty, the homeworld of the invading Clans, and defeated them in combat. You are a warrior of the Eridani Light Horse, a mercenary unit that has discovered a secret Smoke Jaguar holdout on the planet Tranquil. Forces have been sent in to destroy the Jags, but something goes terribly wrong, and the forces are scattered. You land fairly far from your first objective in your Bushwacker, and are instructed to move to the attack. Time to kill some Jags.

The storyline is well-written, and plausible within the scope of the actual BattleTech universe. Briefings consist of probe camera shots and a voice-over of your commander. The camera shots are surprisingly useful, as they show the actual mission terrain.

Loading up a mission does not take very long. Once it is loaded, you can head over to the Mechbay and customize your 'Mech quite easily. The construction and modification rules run parallel to actual BattleTech design rules, and are very easy to pick up, especially for MW2 / Mercs / BattleTech players. Each weapon or component weighs a certain number of tons, and takes up a certain amount of critical space inside a section of your 'Mech. The customization screen is also very intuitive, and you can save your own designs and send them to a friend if you'd like.

Entering the mission is like entering another world, especially when running Direct3D. The outlines of the cockpit (which looks different for each of the 18 types of 'Mechs) appear first, then your 'Mech starts up and the HUD appears. It displays a reticle which is movable with the mouse, a radar screen in the upper left, weapons control in the upper right, targeting in the lower left, personal damage in the lower right, and other components in easy to see areas. All of the HUD overlays are transparent enough to not block one's vision, allowing for easy sighting of the enemy.

The graphics are simply stunning. A laser beam looks just like a shaft of colored light, and missiles leave a smoky trail behind them. High-powered autocannons fire a string of tracers and actually cause your 'Mech to recoil from the blast, and the powerful PPC seems to be an unleashed lightning bolt. The 'Mechs are all textured and traced out with incredible detail, and can even be seen to take damage from weapons fire. Blowing off one's arm leaves a tangle of pipes and components jutting from the enemy's side. Hitting an enemy with a good salvo will send chunks of armor spinning away, and a good kill will force the enemy pilot to eject as fire consumes his fallen 'Mech. A powerful blow will knock a 'Mech flat down, almost painfully. I actually wince on occasion when I see one fall over. Getting up looks equally painful. Lighting effects cast glows across the entire battlefield, and one can see smoke rising from his vanquished foes. Moving even leaves footsteps for a short time.

Sound in this game is excellent as well. The on-board computer calls out warnings as missiles arc in toward you or as your heat scale spikes too high. Lasers sound like a true beam of energy, not a weak squirt as they were in MW2. A PPC blast and hit is easily recognizable, and the heavy pounding of autocannons can strike fear into one's heart. Missiles race from their tubes with a swish, and then you can hear the 'clunk' of the rack loading another salvo. A stricken 'Mech will be consumed with explosions as the pilot screams curses at you, and a damaged one will limp with creaking hydraulics. Forcing a 'Mech to fall calls for a tortured scream of metal and components and a highly satisfying thump on the ground. Unfortunately, MW3 does not have the same powerful musical score that its ancestor MechWarrior 2 had. MW3's music is quiet and easily overlooked.

The enemy AI is quite effective. They aren't always the best of shots, but they do score hits on a realistic frequency. They also have a tendency to conserve their deadliest weapons fire for close range, when they are basically assured to score a hit. Unfortunately, the friendly AI is not quite as smart. Your lancemates can get hung up on tiny objects, and sometimes refuse to fire unless you have given them a specific target to attack. Then when you tell them what to attack, they are sometimes very inept. I once ordered my lancemate to finish off a damaged 'Mech that was twenty tons lighter. The lancemate ran towards him and attacked while I took out some other targets. The next thing I know, my lancemate was limping around, one arm blown off, and the enemy had no additional damage.

Another element of the game that I truly enjoyed was that it followed standard BattleTech rules. All the weapons had the correct range as it was defined in BattleTech, and did the correct amount of damage. The only glaring exception to this is when a 'Mech's leg is blown off. In BattleTech, the 'Mech is not destroyed, merely crippled. In MW3, the 'Mech is destroyed utterly. Another interesting element is the addition of Mobile Field Bases (MFBs) to the game. A standard MFB is a set of three vehicles which carries your salvage, and can also repair and rearm your 'Mech in the field. They are, however, a primary enemy target.

Multi-player support for MW3 is the standard suite of connection protocols - Serial, Modem-to-Modem, IPX network, and TCP/IP. The Microsoft Internet Gaming Zone, an on-line gaming service, supports MW3, although its support is not fully integrated at this time, only allowing free-for-all games and not team play. Connecting to a multi-player game is easy and smooth - out of all the games I played, only once did I see someone fail to connect to the game.

Unfortunately, multi-player goes downhill from there. The multi-player startup screen features a chat box with hard-to-read text, and with no word-wrap around the sides of the box. The rest of the interface is easy to learn - for the host. For the other players, you really cannot do much until the game settings have been locked and set. The only thing you can do is select your 'skin', the color scheme your 'Mech will have. Once the game settings are locked in, you can enter the Mechbay and select the 'Mech you will pilot, and configure it to your liking if the host has allowed modifications. There is a bug that seems to affect the chat after you exit the Mechbay. Sometimes you will be unable to chat after exiting the Mechbay. Fortunately this does not preclude you from playing, but is highly annoying, and seems to be caused by saving a custom configuration in the multi-player mode.

Entering the mission is as smooth as entering one in single-player, and is similar in another way - all the maps for multi-player are taken directly from the single-player campaign. There are no multi-player specific maps. Then when you begin to fight, you realize something. The networking code has not been improved hardly at all over the older MechWarrior games. Lag is a HUGE factor, making some opponents seem to teleport across the battlefield, while others move smoothly. Client prediction, where the game 'predicts' where the objects on the battlefield will move next, is almost non-existent, forcing the player to lead the target to compensate not just for movement, but for lag as well. Until you find the area in which to lag-shoot, it is horribly difficult to fight. In the years since MechWarrior2 and Mercs, the programmers should have been able to improve that area of the code, but they haven't at all. And then, there is a simply horrendous bug that crashes MW3 on occasion. Using the in-game chat will sometimes cause your controls to freeze, and MW3 will close up and return you to the desktop within seconds. Other times, the chat window will stay open, not allowing you to control your 'Mech at all. The majority of the crashes come when one is hosting the game, as well. At least the game can continue if the host crashes out.

These bugs and horrible dependence on compensating for lag are things that Zipper Interactive should not have allowed the game to ship with. There are serious problems with multi-player, and a patch is desperately needed. Worst of all, I have heard rumors of an upcoming multi-player add-on pack, which will probably give MW3 players all the multi-player options and playability that the game should have had originally, for another $20-$30. That is a horrendous practice, and should not be tolerated.

All in all, MW3 is an excellent game - except in multi-player. The graphics are top-notch, and the sound is also of very high quality. The single-player experience is far superior to its predecessors. Unfortunately, the bugs in multi-player detract a lot from this game, and the rumors of a multi-player add-on pack to fix these gaping holes are a very low blow by the company. Shame on the programmers for not having multi-player fully ready to go, but kudos for making an excellent game in all other areas.