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New MechWarrior Announced, MechWarrior4 To Be Distributed Free

Posted by Soulskill on from the as-in-beer dept.

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.

5 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Woo-hoo by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Woo-hoo by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry but that just doesn't fly when you actually play a PC game. I think it's cute that people are that obsessed with how it was originally configured in a tabletop game but there's no logical reason to start forcing me to use lasers instead of autocannons just because that's whan someone else did.

      Gameplaywise I think MW2 really had it set. You could do pretty much anything you wanted, including strapping nothing but machineguns and PPCs to a mech that'd been stripped down to a leafblower for the engine and 3 sandwich wrappers for a heatsink. You'd explode if you tried to fire and never get anywhere but you COULD do it. It was up to you to find effective loadouts, you weren't shoehorned into it by some consoleized list of restrictions.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  2. Q! by StickansT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What was the same type of distribution model that id Games used for Quake3's free release?

  3. In related news.... by NerveGas · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  4. All of MechWarrior 4 will be free by Gwarsbane · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.