Mech Assault (Microsoft / FASA) (Xbox)
Mech Assault is based on the fine tradition of kicking some serious butt in massive walking tanks. Rather than being a straight port from the PC to Xbox, FASA have made this game much more console friendly, dumbing it down so to speak, but still presenting us with an excellent game nonetheless.
The story is a pretty thin excuse for running around blowing the crap out of things. You are a mercenary working for Wolfs Dragoons, an elite group of Mech Warriors who fight for fame and fortune. You’ve been asked to investigate planet Helios, under control of the technological zealots “the Word of Blake”. Your drop ship is attacked whilst landing, and your squad wiped out. You have to continue in the only mech left, achieve your mission directive to disable the planets orbital defence cannons, enabling the full invasion force to attack, and find out what the mysterious Ragnarok is.
You start the game in a Cougar, a light mech that’s not powerful either weapon or armour wise, but is fast. In other versions of Mech Warrior, you could customize your mech, but here you have only one choice of chassis with stock standard armour, weapons, and defences. This simplification makes the game easier to get into, and it’s ok that your first mech is so weak because in your first mission you only fight infantry, tanks and elementals – flying power armoured guys with rockets. Infantry is a lot of fun… you just stomp them. Each mission you finish unlocks heavier and powerful mechs and their variants, which can be used in subsequent missions and the multiplayer component of the game.
The controls are quite simple, so simple in fact they left them out of the guidebook! Left joystick moves you back, forward and side to side, while pushing down on it fires your jump jets. Right joystick twists your torso, and pushing it activates your defensive ability, if available. Right trigger fires your weapons, whilst left toggles through the different types of weapons – missiles, energy and ballistic. As you progress through a map, blowing things up, you’ll notice salvage scattered amongst the ruins of buildings and vehicles. These are essentially “power-ups” for each type of weapon you may have, as well for armour. The more you collect, the more powerful your weapons become.
The graphics are simply superb. Even on tiny screens explosions look fantastic. When you’re nearly dead you limp along, with arcs of electricity crisscrossing your mech. When it rains, the rain sizzles and sprays off your mech. Your mech leaves footprints in the snow. Likewise the sound is excellent, with the creaking groan of bending metal when mechs go down, to the firing lasers and machine guns, to the yells and shouts of the infantry as you step on them. One really cool feature of this game is the interactive landscape. Trees catch on fire when you shoot them; buildings have large holes where hit by missiles, and when hit enough they collapse. You can shoot bridges, and explode rocks to create mini avalanches. Not only does this look superb, it is part of the strategy when fighting other mechs. It’s quite tempting to level everything you can, but once you encounter your first mech, you realise how good the cover in the city is. Sneak behind a building, pound the heck out of it and watch the amount of damage a falling building does to a mech. Being chased by a lot of mechs? Blow up a bridge, and watch the pursuers fall down.
The single player is a lot of fun, but this game truly shines in multiplayer. Playing Xbox Live (officially available in Australia in October, but you can import the kits from the United States and play now), or Serial Connection is most enjoyable. There’s currently 5 modes – Death Match, Team DM, Last Man Standing, Team LMS and Not It! Death Match and Team DM are pretty obvious – kill everything and kill everything not on your side, and Last Man Standing is elimination of each player until one is left. Not it! is everyone onto whoever is “IT” and whoever kills them becomes “IT”. Soon to be available through Xbox Live is a Capture The Flag game. I cannot count how many hours I’ve played this over Xbox Live with many different type of players, but every time it has been immensely fun!
If you are used to Mech Warrior on PC, with the customisation of your Mechs, micromanagement, heat shutdown and so on, you may not like this game that much. However, if you’re into being able to pick up a game and start blasting in an interactive environment that looks and sounds superb, having immense fun whilst doing so, with the ability to play against people instead of just the computer, then this is the game for you.