Mechwarrior 5: Eager and willing to buy souls

Oh no you didn't

So it has been a good long while since E3 has come and gone, as such now I feel a little more in-the-clear to air some grievances with those conferences that I don't feel quite so comfortable ragging on, like the PC gamer show. Gearbox are big boys, they can take all the criticism we can feed them just fine and gorge on it for all we care, Ubisoft are just as happy to self sabotage their own reputation by simply consisting of just plain being horrible people; but the PC gamer show is something of a sacred spot. That's because it's the only real place for the gems of the PC indie market to get their chance on the big stage, without selling their freedom away to one of the big studios at least. It's either this show or get published by Devolver Digital, but not everyone can get published by DD. So kicking these guys sort of feels like kicking down on the defenceless little kid at the play park, no matter how annoying his sketches and product placement is. But now we've the space of a few months, I feel a bit better asking; what the heck was that game the PC gamer Awards sold their soul to?

MechWarrior 5. Pretty self explanatory as far as names go, and also a bit elucidating because to be totally honest with you, I was entirely unaware of the apparently prestigious MechWarrior family of games up until now. I feel like a newbie rocking up to Final Fantasy XVI feeling overwhelmed only to quickly learn that the number XVI doesn't even cover a third of the amount of games under the umbrella of that franchise. Am I about to learn that MechWarrior is one of the most influential pieces of content made since Machiavelli's 'Il Principe'? Am I to learn that Jesus, just after the last supper, popped on a quick match of the original MechWarrior before sulking off to meet his fate? Was the war between the Titans and Olympians originally waged over who would get to pick their team first from the iconic MechWarrior roster? I can only assume the truth of all of that and much more with the sheer nauseating reverence that was shoved wholesale down my gullet during that conference.

"Oh hey, that game was great but you wanna know what's really great? MechWarrior 5", "Now we're done showcasing those games, lets move onto the real show; a twitter poll about MechWarrior 5", "You know what will make this conference pop off? An extended series of skits about MechWarrior 5 and a mascot, complete with bad acting and cringe jokes-" Why do we have press conference presenters again? No, I'm being serious- they have the exact opposite job of presenters from other branches of media: Other presenters keep the show moving whilst these guys bog it down. Oftentimes they showcase a distinct lack of an ability to keep the audience's attention, they're never as funny or likeable as they think they are and if you give them too much rope (I.E. screentime) they hang themselves with it. Invariably, every freakin' time. Nintendo has their modern press conferences just be a string of games with a disembodied voice either providing commentary or just introductions. It's professional, never keeps off the games for too long and doesn't try to become our best friends with misplaced jokes that never land. I never thought I'd say something like this to the wider gaming industry, but in this hyper specific singular instance: Learn from Nintendo.

But you might be wondering what exactly is this game that these hosts were left simping for, and I mean apart from the favoured pastime of the gods and clearly the entity to which the PC gaming conference sold it's soul. Well it's a name that actually does hail from a beloved series of machine-based war games that go all the way back to the tabletop fields under the label of 'BattleTech'. (It always goes back to the tabletops, doesn't it? Plus 3 to initiative) To this avail the excitement over the series does a make a little more sense to the uninitiated like me, because MechWarrior 5 marks the very first mainline entry into the series since 2002, so I can forgive a little bit of splurging on their part. Except, wait a minute, Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries came out in 2019. Yeah, I thought I recognised that name and some of the gameplay, so what gives? 

Well as it just so happens, the game originally came out as an Epic exclusive. (Wow, way to mark your 'grand return to the masses'. Coming right out of the gate and saying; "Who will pay me the most for my dignity?") Then they turned around and bought the game to Xbox Game Pass a year later, demonstrating quite soundly how possible it is to have your cake and eat it all in the same motion. This year's E3 marked the very next step of the series onwards to Steam, Series X, GOG and everywhere else apart from Playstation because I guess someone still wants to get those exclusivity dollars. But wait, the game came to Game Pass PC before coming to Xbox? Is that a thing that games do nowadays? Seems a little backwards if you ask me. And that's not even taking into account the fact that we had an entire gaming conferenced funded by and dedicated to a re-release. How gauche. (Thank god Rockstar swore off of E3 more than a decade ago, else we'd be looking at a GTA V conference anyday now.)

As for the game itself, MechWarrior is exactly what you think it is; it's a wargame where you romp around in giant mech machines and stomp on military forces before their number can overwhelm you. It's characterised by the feeling of being like a Kaiju crashing through the smaller than you, and as such there's a big focus on destructibility and the visualisation of general devastation. MechWarriors does take this a little further to a satisfying extent by having some decent damage mapping on the mechs that you use, because it's always fun to see the chaos wrought on yourself in the aftermath of gruelling duels, more games should focus on player damage mapping. I just can't shake the perception personally that it's a bit of an oldschool and small-scale approach to mech-combat which is honestly likely by design but still not really for me.

Whilst I've never stepped into this genre of game myself, my recent CRPG foray should show that I'm always open to plunging myself wholesale into new genres in order to see what makes them tick. But when I look at Mech combat games these types of games just don't really excite me. They seem so small in comparison to, and I'm going to do the cliché here, the offerings that the Japanese side of the industry have. I mean, compare the typical military scenarios of  MechWarrior to the insane bombastic lunacy of Zone of Enders. Maybe that's coming from my Metal Gear fandom, as ZOE was always sort of a companion title to those games, but it's still the latter example which sparks my imagination and has me wondering what the heck could be in store for me. I've seen what MechWarrior has to offer. I've seen Armoured Core and Steel Battalion. I'd prefer this Evangelion-esque, alien melodrama. (I presume the ZOE series is full of melodrama, Hideo Kojima was one of the designers afterall.)

None of which is to denigrate MechWarrior 5 and the obvious appeal it has for the military mech fighter genre, because there are clearly those out there who simply love this game. For what I've seen it appears to look very approachable too, lacking the ludicrous control panel of the more 'simulator' style of this genre like Steel battalion; so if this sort of game has ever appealed to you than this is likely the ideal place to start. I think that the visual presentation leaves a little to be desired, even for a game that released back in 2019, but it accomplishes the task well enough and not every game on god's green earth needs to dabble with subsurface skin refractions and realistic volumetric particle dispersal, sometimes you just need solid explosions, and MechWarrior has solid explosions. I just think, at the end of the day, that if you want me to think favourably of your game and consider actually purchasing it; the best approach might not be hijacking a gaming conference and doing so many self-inserts that I dread to hear your name. Trust me when I say this, especially in this day and age: all publicity is not good publicity.