Mech Commander 2

List Price: $16.99 Discount Price: $5.80

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

LOVE MECHS!! [Posted on 2003-05-04]
The graphics, imagination, and detail are all WONDERFUL! I have and always will love anything and everything to do with mechs. This particular title is quite fun to play and I am glad that I bought it. The only thing I don't like is that it can get very choppy at times.

Awesome Game [Posted on 2003-08-03]
Mechcommander 2 is an awesome game. If you enjoyed mechcommander, you will like this one even more. You can add armor and heat sinks, and weapon choices are based on space(and heat). The only part I don't like is that not every mech can have jump jets. Another neat thing is that you sometimes need light mechs to complete missions. 5 medium and heavy mechs can complete a mission that 3 assault mechs can't. You have resource points for each mission and can capture more. These allow you to repair your mechs and gain control over defeated ones. If you like going around in big robots and destroying stuff, you will like this game.

Horrible Service [Posted on 2003-11-04]
This game is absolutly horrible. I have a Radeon 9600 PRO and an Athlon XP 1700+ cpu, 512 RAM, and other good stuff too, and this piece of junk doesnt work. There are no game updates, no tech support from MICROSOFT!, and none of the solutions listed at microsoft tech support make it run. It installs fine, and starts to run the game and then just stops. New drivers were unable to fix it and who knows if I can return it. I give it one star becuase it looked fun and with my RADEON video card Im sure it would have looked sweet too!

Concept is there, but the game is lacking [Posted on 2004-11-11]
Ok, first go read some of the bad reviews which talk about problems with getting the game to run. They are right. I have 2 computers, and for reasons that escape me one of them will not run this game. As a result you may want to borrow it from a friend and see if you can get it to work properly before you buy it.

The Good:

The battle system is very intuitive, and gives a nice ammount of control over your units. You can tell them to aim for different mech parts, concerve ammo, or engage at a specific range. You can almost pick the game right up and start playing it, though you may want to go through the training missions just to be sure you know about some of the finer points.

The mechs are also very well done, though I don't like the customization freedom with them (sure with the clan mechs it is ok since they are all omni, but last I checked most IS mechs were not). They do look a little blocky, however it does not end up detracting from the game.

The actors hired for this did a very good job. Cut sceens are convincing and you actually get to the point where you feel like you know them. The plot is fairly transparent, however it is more than enough to hold the game together and avoids the pitfall of making things too complicated.

The Bad:

The game is much too short, and much too easy. First time I played through I played on normal and it took me 3 days. Second time I decided to play on the hardest difficulty, and I am sad to say I didn't notice any difference. Very few of the missions are truely hard (most that are belong to House Leio, and even they are just what I feel the average difficulty should be). This means there is also very little replay value.

Adding to the little replay value is the fact that the plot is 100% liner. Nothing you do ever effects what you are going to do next or where you are going. Once you have played through once, you have seen it all. This also makes it feel like you arn't really a merc commander. You don't get to chose your jobs or to weigh risk and proffit at all. The game just strings you along, and no matter what your proformance in the mission if you complete it then you move on in the plot.

Mechs come out feeling a little flimsy with few exceptions. This is mostly due to the fact that later on the head is much too easy to hit. My standard tactic became pulling along a few mechs with long range weapons and just targeting the head of the mech. It would kill the mech with little to no dammage to the rest of the mech, making it ready to salvage and giving me that much larger of a force for that mission.

Another thing that this game would have benifited immensly from would be some type of campaign/mission editor to allow players to make thier own games. This simple addition would have pushed this game up to 4 stars overall raiting and a 5 star fun raiting since the problems with the campaign could be overlooked with the addition of player maps and campaigns that would cater to differetn interests.

If you consider yourself a fan of MW I would give this a try, but don't expect the world from it. The campaign is good enough that you won't be appaled by it, and the multiplayer is good (though nothing too terrably special as far as I could see) if you can find someone to play with. If you are just a fan of RTS games you should look someplace else as this will leave you with a wanting feeling.

Not bad, but too easy [Posted on 2005-01-02]
The original Mech Commander was very challenging and rewarding when missions were completed, and indeed exhilarating when the campaign was won. Then came Mech Commander Gold (MCG), with all of its newer features and commands for easier gameplay. MCG's new campaign didn't have the oomph that the first, original campaign did, mainly because the new controls made things a little too easy. Mech Commander 2 continues this trend, with an intuitive interface that somewhat oversimplifies the game into something that can be beaten in several days. I won this campaign in two days on the normal setting.

I liked this game because I am a Battletech fan. However, while it has both good and bad points (following below), it just lacked the challenge of the first one. After successfully winning that difficult game, I quickly dispatched this one into the past-game void.

Good Points

1) Lots of Battletech-y stuff to play with and blow up
2) Interesting storyline (albeit some over the top acting)
3) Good LOS rules
4) While the game is rather linear, as noted in other reviews, the idea of being a mercenary band is interesting

Bad Points

1) Easiest setting is too easy, hardest setting is too hard (taking two Bloodasp assault 'mechs against infantry and getting torn to pieces)
2) Campaign is too short, too easy for veteran Mech Commanders
3) Mission Editor is complicated to learn and use
4) All 'mechs (Clan and Inner Sphere) follow limited Omnimech rules, like most other offerings from FASA Interactive

Overall, I would give this a 3 1/2 star rating, depending on one's level of experience with the Mech Commander series.

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