Hello everyone,
Door number 10 ?
Good on you there BD-1 with the hat. This one is a curious one … you usually build up Lego from small components but this one is just one piece for BD-1, sitting on a 2×2 circle to stabilise the little one.
BD-1 is a kit I’ve been tempted by, although I’ve slowed down my lego acquisitions lately. It takes up too much space.
The games of the day are mostly the Battletech series, which started in a tabletop battle form before being converted to computer gaming. The original came out way back in 1989 running in MS DOS … Ancient ! This is a game that I completely missed, coming into the series with Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, which I can remember enjoying playing through a few times.
This one was from 1996 and had you as a small time Mercenary Mechwarrior pilot trying to make your way around the fringes of the galaxy, taking jobs as they come and attempting to stay solvent enough to keep the Battlemechs in good repair and yourself in one piece in the missions.
It was a good little game too.
I skipped over a few more, before finding the two Mechcommander games. I can’t remember the first one much but I enjoyed playing through Mechcommander 2. This one was a real time strategy type variant, converting the tabletop rules to run in that time frame instead of the big handfuls of time that turn based games run in. At that time, the popularity of games like Command and Conquer and Warcraft meant strategy games were all about being real time based with turn based going out of fashion.
It’s probably an easier transition than it seems, instead of turns being minutes, you split them up into seconds instead, have a lot more turns and give the illusion of real time.
While the previous games had you in the pilot’s seat, the Mechcommander games elevated you to the godlike position, commanding all of the mechs in the lance. Instead of you aiming the guns and steering the robot, you told them where to go and what to shoot at and probabilities would determine whether they’d hit or not.
Different game styles for different people. I like both … at the right times. There’s times when I want the disconnected position and times when I want to be doing the pew pew.
There were a few more games along the way of varying success levels. I think Mechwarrior 3 came along at a time when I couldn’t afford to own a machine of sufficient power to run it. This was the time when PC components were rapidly advancing in power and performance and by the time you’d upgraded the machine to catch up, the games needing high performance had been forgotten and there was a new Shiny around.
Or I was just deep in the Master of Orion 2 addiction and didn’t have time for other games. I missed Mechwarrior 4 as well and avoided Mechwarrior Online as it was one of those shallow online things instead of following a storyline.
Apparently the latest game, Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries has a storyline keeping it together but I think I’m avoiding that as well due to issues with how the game is set up. I’d usually look to clear opposition from levels in these type of games and then be able to operate freely (or depart) … I get annoyed when endless waves come in when it doesn’t make sense for this to happen, which is a characteristic of MW5:M.
And then there’s the recent Battletech game, which I enjoy quite a lot still. I’m a bit on and off with it again but it’s one I’ll keep coming back to.
There’s lots of variation in Battlemech available, although you tend to go towards one theme or another. I tend to reduce the guns and increase the armour. Each mech has a weight limit that you have to stay within and the guns, armour, heatsinks and jet packs all have their own weight.
Plus while having a full set of guns would mean an incredible first shot, they’d overheat your mech and you’d actually only be able to sustain fire from 2, 3 or maybe 4 lasers, guns or missiles. Kinda like asking if you’re getting value out of what’s fitted. If the guns aren’t being used, they might as well have been armour instead.
Good game. The story was criticized as being a bit dull and long but I enjoyed the story missions cropping up along the way. The game is not well optimised, with long loading times unless you have it on an SSD. It also eats memory and with the Roguetech mod, was unplayable on Pumpkin with its 8GB of memory.
But I liked it, warts and all. I didn’t like Roguetech for another whole heap of reasons, not all of which were to do with what they did to the gameplay.
What’s that in the first picture ? Haha, I intended to have Michael Stackpole’s Ghost War book from the Battletech universe back there but I couldn’t find it. So the game adaptation of Robot Wars came in as substitute.
Hmm. Should I be polite about it ? Nah. The Robot Wars game was a buggy mess and one of those merchandising cash ins on the very popular TV competition series of the time. It was playable … but instantly forgettable and just not that good.
Even if Robot Wars ran, I wouldn’t bother now.
Instead, it’s likely to be Mars Horizon for the end of that game or the also new Per Aspera where you’re playing as an AI construct in charge of terraforming Mars. I enjoyed a first look at that one the other night.
Need food though. Shopping first. Back tomorrow.
Stay well, be safe ! Wait … that’s not right. Be well, stay safe !
PS There’s another massively hyped Big Game out today. I’m not talking about or playing that one for a whole heap of reasons.