Mechwarrior 3 by John Reynolds
	Released in the fall of 1995, Mechwarrior 2 became an almost instant success with gamers of all stripes. Oft delayed, and burdened with a checkered development history, Mech 2 blended simulation-like details with frenetic action. Strangely enough, or perhaps not, the same can be said for its successor. Following some four years later, Mechwarrior 3 has finally arrived onto store shelves, having been passed around from one software house to another like a Todd Porter title. But has history truly repeated itself, allowing this new game to capture the magic of its predecessor? Or was the enchantment broken by the dispelling of Activision? Installing Mechwarrior 3 is your standard fare of accepting the licensing agreement and choosing various options, such as the install directory, though it does offer more choices than most other install routines and lays down a modest drive footprint of some 300mb. One aspect for which Mech 2 was renowned was its incredible opening sequence and its sequel certainly doesn't fail in this regard; there's something about a rousing intro being accentuated by a good subwoofer to stir a gamer's blood. Like the installation, Mechwarrior 3's structure is pretty much standard for these days, offering a campaign, instant action, and multiplayer modes. The heart of a game of this nature is its campaign, and for Mech 3 this is unfortunately its greatest weakness. Commencing with another quality movie that depicts a botched invasion by your forces, the campaign consists of little more than 20+ individual, scripted missions. In essence, this gives the player an extremely short campaign that is frustrating at times due to the fact that there is no branching win/lose structure- you keep replaying each mission until you beat it. Perhaps worse yet, the scripted nature of the missions themselves is then predictable. As an example, I felt I had just started playing the game, barely tapping into its presumed depths, when I realized that I was half way through finishing the entire campaign. To make matters worse, much of the campaign's difficulty is not derived from canny enemies, but rather the inundation, or sheer numbers, of your opponents. Enemy mechs would often stand perfectly still while my long range lasers chirped away at their various surfaces, an effective tactic when considering how flat most of the game's terrain is. Click to continue		Sprinkled with an occasional cliff that helps form a small plateau, Mech 3's landscape is disappointingly uniform, a step back from the sprawling valleys in Starsiege. For a campaign that consists of hunting down the remnants of a broken Clan, its missions certainly throw a more than fair amount of enemy mechs your way, though their collective intelligence perhaps hints at why the clan is on the brink of being annihilated. And here's where I feel obliged to briefly interrupt this review for a patented Reynolds' Rant. Since the advent of 3D acceleration, it seems like game developers are putting more and more effort into the underlying technology of a game rather than the gameplay itself, shirking the core of a game while belaboring the sensual trappings, the oh-so-marketable bells and whistles. This visually Cyrenaic approach to game development is producing titles such as Mechwarrior 3, fantastic software engines that technically do everything right while still feeling somewhat hollow, slighted, or even unfulfilled. And as my master, Yoda, once said, "Graphics are for six months. . .gameplay is forever!" This is a mantra that should be embraced by all game developers, lest they become children of a less creative god. But returning to the review. . . . In spite of the rant above, it's amazing how seductive the latest in computer technology can be to even the most jaded of gamers. Mech 3 may sport a short, repetitive campaign, but this flaw is coated in some serious techno-candy. For one thing, the graphics are absolutely phenomenal, the Sistine Chapel of 3D acceleration. Mechs are extremely well detailed and modeled, and animated with such care that it puts the drab movements of Starsiege to shame. It's hard to adequately express the rawly immersive quality of Mech 3's graphics. The sounds are also top-notch, though the music is somewhat repetitive; moreover, the tectonic rumblings of your mech as you bestride the war-torn mission areas like an armored goliath give you an almost false sense of invincibility as you crush soldiers and buildings beneath your feet, blast craters in the ground, and wreak alpha strike havoc on your enemies. Go to Page Two Main
Copyright © 1997 - 2000 COMBATSIM.COM, INC. All Rights Reserved. Last Updated June 18th, 1999