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New MechWarrior Announced, MechWarrior4 To Be Distributed Free
Vamman writes "In light of the recent announcement of the new MechWarrior game, Smith and Tinker has granted our online dev team MekTek.net (which has been supporting MechWarrior for almost a decade now) permission to release MechWarrior 4 entirely for free using the same type of distribution model that id Games used for Quake3's free release.
Excellent news about Mechwarrior 4. I wonder if the stand-alone Mercenaries spin-off (which I preferred) is also included (I note the expansions are)?
Also good news that if the screenshots/concept art are anything to go by, they plan on doing this properly. It doesn't look to me like some arcade-ified MechAssault type of game. I used to love the Mechwarrior games, partially because the complexity made it feel like you really were in command of a huge lump of metal. I don't expect they'll use half the keyboard on controls again, but if they can get something with even a vaguely sim-like feel, I'll be delighted.
I'm also very pleased that they're jumping back in the time-line. The Clans are great, and it would be neat if this game could feature the Clan invasion as its finale (like Battletech 2 and Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries), but I always felt that the narrative just meandered after that. Plus it's actually a lot of fun trying to survive in relatively primative mechs like the Jenner.
What was the same type of distribution model that id Games used for Quake3's free release?
I don't know how many of you ever played Mechwarrior 4, but at its very heart it was an open source game. In Mechwarrior 4 mercenaries, you were allowed to model and add your own vehicles, weapons, and maps to the game. The Mw4 community added no less than 30 incredible mechs to the game, as well as a wide variety of vehicles and weapons that were throughly tested and balanced through extensive player testing.
It was this community effort that brought mechwarrior in line with its true battletech roots, and Microsoft gained a lot of my respect because not only did they allow it? They encouraged it, by making these extensions easy to build and distribute.
The only complaint I have is that the open source expansions broke Microsoft's expansion, and I couldn't use my WarHawk anymore. (Masakari, to you Inner Sphere Trash).
My gods, please don't take yet another PC game that works so fantastically with the keyboard-mouse combination and 'dumb it down for the masses' that use console controls. Note, I'm not saying console gamers are dumb, just the controls are in many types of games.
Joystick manufacturers expect, once again, to be able to make a profit!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Everything, will be free. Vengence, Blackknight, the packs and Mercs. It will also include a whole bunch of maps and MekTek's own MekPaks. It will all be one download more then likely via bit torrent, the ISO image maybe as large as 3 or 4 gigs.
MechWarrior is great and all but its often frustratingly slow controls makes it a snore fest.
I hope they improve on this major flaw. Its the one aspect of MechWarrior that hurt it.
No, that's exactly why many people loved the MechWarrior games so much. They (the good ones, at least), are not arcadey action games, they are giant robot combat simulators. Hundred-ton hunks of metal covered in weapons are not quick, agile acrobats; they are tanks with legs. The more realistic behavior of the mechs makes combat more about strategy and tactics than twitch reflexes.
If that's the kind of mech game you want, there are other ones out there that cater to you (ZoE). Please don't try to change MechWarrior into something it's not.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I'm looking at these announcements and they're saying the game is going to be released "for free". I do not see what this has to do with Quake 3 at all, or even how the two releases are similar. Quake 3 the game was never released "for free" unless you are counting Quake Live.
I think the submitter may have fucked up.
I stopped playing video games after Mechwarrior 4. Partly because I had other things to do (like raise a child) but partly because I haven't been able to get interested in computer games since.
With a new Mechwarrior out, I will probably go out and get a modern joystick and give it a shot. I'm especially glad they went back to the Clans, as they had the more interesting mechs and backstory.
I'm hoping that we see some new abilities in the new game. I always thought it was odd that in the 31st century you fired weapons by manually lining up a hood ornament on your enemy, when 20th century technology has object recognition and automatic targeting. Or, at least, some kind of helmet tracking. What, did computer technology get lost in the intervening years?
In a slightly different vein, it seems like in all that time someone would have thought to weld on a few weapons backwards on the chassis. (With associated hardpoint and weight penalties, of course.) A lot of knife fights depended solely on how fast you could turn your chassis to bring weapons to bear. This doesn't seem reasonable in the 31st century. I want to be able to glance in my rearview mirror and squeeze off a few rounds or missiles at that mech sneaking up behind me. Or -- this would be cool -- have the arms be articulate enough to temporarily point backwards.
It should be possible in this day and age to have the mechs be as fully articulate as the backstory led us to believe.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.