MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf

The game puts forth a decent (not great, sadly) presentation and can be quite a bit of fun

I’ll admit that I haven’t always quite held the Mech Assault series in good faith. I’ve certainly tended to lean towards the simulation side of gaming, but I don’t mind juicing it up a little with a pure-action-oriented foray here and there. That said, my shock and dismay was quite evident when Mech Assault was announced, with the development team promoting a crazed campaign of “accessibility” and “simple controls”. How could one possibly take a hardcore, complex, and highly strategic universe like Battletech and make a twitch-based action game out of it? Well, apparently by making Mechs litter power-ups all over the landscape like candy when they explode, modifying PPCs to be self-guiding, and creating a control system that causes a Mech’s legs to spin around like crazy while maneuvering and allowing them to instantly reverse direction. In other words, you basically make a title that has Battletech Mechs, Battletech planets, Battletech factions, and Battletech characters, but actually has little to do with Battletech.

Of course, when I played Mech Assault originally, I tried to set all this aside – after all, even the most sophisticated kind of gamer wants to play Serious Sam every once in awhile, right? I went into the game expecting a simplistic action-based shooter and got exactly that, but I also got a game that had incredibly pleasing graphics, gameplay elements that worked surprisingly well with each other, and some addictive multiplayer action to boot – until everyone started filling the maps with the assault-class Mechs, of course. While Mech Assault was hardly the game to make me hang up my Steel Battalion controller, it was refreshing to note that so long as I pretended it was a game that had no physical relation to the Battletech universe, I could actually enjoy it to a degree. Naturally though, the game had its share of rather sizable flaws and quite the lackluster singleplayer campaign, so I’ve been looking forward to playing Day 1 Studios’ next release in the series in the hopes that they would have addressed a lot of the things that irritated me about the first game and put out a solid title, and it looks like my patience may have been rewarded – if only just. Let’s take a look at how Mech Assault 2 lives up to the hype

While having experience with the original Mech Assault isn’t necessary to enjoy MA2, it does take place immediately after the original (like most sequels do), so playing it before-hand can help with understanding what little plot there is. Basically, following their victory over The Word of Blake and their mysterious “data core” technology, the last remaining unit of the Wolf’s Dragoons (consisting of Major Natalia Kerensky, technician Lt. Foster, and a single generic Mechwarrior – that’d be you) have set down on the planet Dante to try and assess the situation, upgrade their technology, and presumably try to figure out what to do next. It’s not too long however before a new menace begins assaulting the planet, forcing the trio to put their fancy new Battle Armor technology into action ahead of schedule and try to figure out what’s going on. The arrival of a mysterious visitor certainly doesn’t make things any less confusing, and it’s not long before the Dragoons are off on another cliché dash to save the Inner Sphere.

Mech Assault 2’s campaign is made up of about 20 missions that take place on a number of different planets. When the game starts off, it throws you right into the action with some quick on-screen tips for how to run around and shoot – but unlike the original, the game doesn’t provide a giant robot to run around in right off the bat. Instead, the player is given access to the aforementioned Battle Armor technology for use in repelling the enemy assault. It’s immediately obvious that the Battle Armor is one of the most unique new items the game offer, simply because of the newfound tactical flexibility and perspective it offers. Whereas stomping around in a Mech involves little more creativity than stepping on stuff or filling it full of lasers, the Battle Armor encourages stealth, cunning, and careful aim. Its main weapon is a flimsy little laser, but it also comes equipped with a new mortar launcher, which is capable of doing a tremendous amount of damage when aimed properly. The Battle Armor also has jump-jets and a big claw, enabling it to scale large structures by either leaping right over them, or systematically working its way up by clawing onto the sides in between jump-jet recharge intervals. The single thing that makes the Battle Armor the most devastating, however, is the new “NeuroHack” function. By jumping up to an enemy Mech and latching on with the claw, it’s possible to force the enemy pilot to eject. Once latched on, a little mini-game appears that challenges the player to hit specific buttons on his controller in a sequence as quickly as possible, while the victim Mech pilot must also do the same. If the player is too slow, he’ll be “denied” and take some damage as he’s knocked off the Mech, but if he succeeds, the enemy pilot will be forced clear of his vehicle, which will be ripe for the taking.

Which brings me to another new feature MA2 offers – the ability to get in and out of Mechs, vehicles, and yes, even turrets and aircraft on the player’s whim. At any time the Y button can be pressed to hop out of whatever vehicle is currently being manned, allowing the player to run around on foot. Of course, an unarmored Mech pilot isn’t exactly good for much in combat besides getting stepped on, but the campaign offers a number of stealth challenges involving having the player hack a door open (certain doors can only be opened on foot, rather than blown down or jumped over), use remote demolition charges to take down strategic buildings, or just steal an unmanned Mech or vehicle before being spotted, adding a new level of novelty to the mission scripting. Between this and the new NeuroHack system, players now have a bit more freedom in which Mech they use to go about finishing a mission – although in contrast, there’s no longer any way to select which Mech the player starts with (in singleplayer as well as multiplayer), so things seem to have balanced out.

Naturally the core of the gameplay (and a player’s survival) still revolves around power-ups, Mech Assault’s jarring departure from the usual system of swapping out or upgrading a Mech’s components to make it more effective in the field. Just like in the original Mech Assault, each Mech in MA2 has a pre-assigned setup of a maximum of three separate weapons, and that’s it. Aside from a single variation in the configuration of most Mechs (such as the differences between a “Mad Cat” and a “Timber Wolf”, one of which focuses on PPCs, machineguns, and LRMs, the other which carries lasers, gauss rifles, and SRMs), the only major contributing factor in how well one Mech will do against the other is how powered up its weapons are. Each weapon can be upgraded two times, with the final level naturally being the most devastating, but any weapon level above the default will have limited ammunition, causing the weapon to revert back to its weakened state once depleted.

Now that I’ve exploded the heads of nearly every self-respecting Battletech fan in existence, I’ll continue by stating that, from a pure gameplay standpoint, the system carried over to MA2 still works surprisingly well. Since the game also tracks heat management, players have to carefully decide how they’ll deploy their available arsenal before being forced to cease fire, and while even players with low-level weapons will still stand a chance if they land some lucky hits, it’s ultimately down to a desperate dash of who has the biggest, most upgraded weapons – and since destroyed Mechs often drop both weapon and repair power-ups, players are easily rewarded for getting a good kill and are able to keep going. To be honest, the concept of a gimped Mech with a damaged gyro shooting sparks all over the place suddenly returning to pristine condition because it walked over a strange glowing green crate will be a little hard for fans of the Mechwarrior series to wrap their heads around, and there will either be people who outright refuse to play the game based on this, or others, like myself, who will continue to try and shove craziness of this sort to the back of their minds in favor of attempting to have an enjoyable experience, but the end result is that, just like in the original Mech Assault, the whole power-up system in MA2 is a pretty well-implemented approach to a game designed to keep the action hard and fast and not bog the player down with crazy things like proper Mech customization. Take it as you will.

As for the campaign’s difficulty, MA2 will still offer something of a challenge to even veterans of the original, though the campaign as a whole felt a little easier and more carefully balanced than what the original had to offer. So long as I kept my eyes open and was careful about how many enemies I tried to take on at once, I usually had no problem with blowing my way through the missions. A few of the Battle Armor segments were somewhat tricky though, as I usually only got one chance to hijack a Mech, and if I failed at the frantic button-sequence mini-game I usually ended up dead on the spot. Thankfully, the missions are segmented by a number of checkpoints and also are fairly short, so even players that have trouble with certain parts don’t have to worry about repeating long chunks of a mission over and over again. Thanks to the fluid, easy-to-grasp control system, Mech Assault 2 definitely isn’t a hard game to get into, so it sure looks like the development team’s goal of accessibility has been maintained for the sequel.

The sad part of it all is, despite the mixed gameplay praise I’ve given, MA2’s singleplayer campaign just really isn’t all that great. The action feels really generic and tedious after awhile (with one or two exceptions, like the neat mission where you use a VTOL aircraft to quickly drop defenses and supplies around your location, then land and jump in a turret to hold off an enemy assault), and the increasingly poor storyline doesn’t help. Towards the end of the game, I became more and more jarred by the sheer amount of destruction the single Mechwarrior pilot in the game was able to cause all by himself, without any real direct combat support, and by the time I got to the final “boss”, I was both laughing and crying at the same time at how absolutely cheesy the entire game had gotten, audibly thinking “okay, I just tore through three waves of assault Mechs with my Nova Cat – what the hell could they possibly throw at me next to make the game interesting? Oh, goody, more assault Mechs.” I think the only useful purpose the campaign had was in preparing me for the game’s multiplayer side, which is thankfully where the game actually starts to show some true shine.

It’s obvious that a huge amount of effort went into Mech Assault 2’s multiplayer component, and thanks to the multi-vehicular gameplay options available, the action feels far more strategic than the original ever was. Worth mentioning first is the game’s “Conquest” mode, which actually seems similar initially to the “Campaign” mode Steel Battalion: Line of Contact revolved around. Players signing into Conquest mode for the first time through their Xbox Live accounts are asked to select one of the major Inner Sphere houses to join, and are then plunged into a combined stat screen and galaxy map, indicating which house currently has dominance in an area. Players can select a planet to fight upon, which then lists a number of currently running game servers that they can join and get in on the action with. Their victories or defeats during gameplay will then affect the galaxy map, and either bolster their faction’s control, or diminish it disgracefully. This all sounded great on the surface to me, but to be honest, I had a lot of trouble settling into Conquest mode once the initial novelty wore off, as there didn’t seem to be any kind of clear reward system in place for a winning faction (aside from the stat-tracking), and most of my friends preferred to hang out in the standard matchmaking lobbies – which is where I ended up too, since I much preferred playing with my trusted buddies than the culmination of idiocy and stupidity that make up a good deal of the random Xbox Live playerbase (can you blame me?)