Mercs review: Computer Games Strategy Plus Online

[John C. Brunson]

©1996 Strategy Plus, Inc..

MechWarrior: Mercenaries Battletech gaming at the max
Activision

by Steve Wartofsky

With Mercenaries, Activision comes full circle to the Inner Sphere, to be
exact. For all its glorious detail, MechWarrior 2 in its last installments
played relatively fast and loose with the FASA world. Sure, enough detail was
there to give players a consistent sense that they were operating within the
full, role-playing Battletech universe, but the parameters of that universe
were stretched and bent a bit to accommodate the software.

This time around, however perhaps partly in response to the recent
acquisition
of FASA by a current competitor (MicroProse, formerly Spectrum Holobyte) the
designers have decided to go all out and put together a Battletech simulation
that's as faithful to the heart of Battletech as they can possibly get it
in a
computer game.

What does this mean? At the story level, it means that the return to the
Inner
Sphere will also be a return to the Battle of Tukayyid, an epic event
significant to long-time participants in Battletech. Tukayyid will be a
culmination of the game, a historic event which Mercenaries leads the player
up to.

MechWarriors of the Inner Sphere are expected to be veterans, so this time
around, resource management and squad building will not be the given it's
been
(relatively speaking) in the prior games. Players will have to pay dearly for
damage here, and work hard to gain sufficient salvage to keep their own
personal progress going, without any promise of outside support from one
House
or another.

The game is conceived as a prequel to Mechwarrior 2, putting players into
events 18 years prior to the time frame of the latter. The year is 3039, to
be exact; both the Houses and the invading Clans are pitted against each
other
in a dog-eat-dog struggle for power and balance. The laws of honor in battle
are put to the test by the needs of profit and survival. And what about the
game?

As with many story-oriented computer games, the player's concerns these days
are most likely to be not how plausible the situation seems, but whether or
not the game design itself enables the imagined story. Any one of us could
scream with frustration at the number of times we've had to compensate over
the years for some completely obvious gaffe intruding on our treasured
imaginary universe often it boils down to something as seemingly trivial as
one too many mouse clicks, a character walking on air, an AI that bends over
backwards to let the player win once it's been reverse-engineered, etc. While
Battletech fans will want Mercenaries to be true to the details of the
role-playing universe, they'll also want the game itself to basically get out
of the way enough during play to keep the sense of role-playing intact.

This is where the Mercenaries team is most heavily focused, i.e. in
constructing sufficient detail at a number of levels that players will feel
they're not jumping around between disconnected elements, but operating
within
a design that's totally integrated around the well-defined terms of
Battletech. Salvage capability during battle will thus be tied intimately to
player battle performance and finesse, for example; resource management will
have to manage the fact that damage in one mission impacts on the next
step in
the player's career during a campaign; contract review, 'Mech trade, news and
even the skills of technicians available for hire will all contribute to the
player's sense that yes, this is Battletech, and yes, enough of the dynamic
features of the original FASA conception are implemented in-software to make
this not just a battling 'Mechs simulation (which it certainly remains),
but a
first-person-oriented real-time strategy and resource and role-playing system
as well. Technically speaking It even parcels itself out in the details of
the way the AI for the NPCs (aka opponents) has been constructed for
Mercenaries. While speaking with Jack Mamais and John Spinale (Associate &
Executive Producers for the project), we were told that attention has been
paid to both making and breaking the rules of honor in Battletech. As
mercenaries, players will have a freer hand when dealing with questions of
honor and survival than they've ever had before. This will not
(initially) be
true for the computer characters generated for control by the various Houses
and Clans; however, as time goes on and the player's mercenary behavior has
its impact, the computer-run opponents will change their AI and start to
respond to the player's own more "pragmatic" approach to battle. Expect
computer characters to play by the Battletech rules to begin with, in other
words; but watch carefully to see at what point they also start to break
them,
to stay competitive with the player's own renegade style.

The original Mechwarrior 2 improved radically, we think, over time and with
the Ghost Bear's Legacy add-on is relatively elemental in both graphics
and 3D
geometry technology. It does everything it needs to do for the game, of
course, and will always remain a classic. But Mercenaries pushes hard in both
the graphics and sound design, with such new features as full texture-mapping
of all surfaces (buy that Pentium 150!), truly three-dimensional rolling
terrain surfaces, and much more complex weapons launch and explosion
animation. Working with the pre-Alpha engine we had the opportunity to
investigate, it also looks like yet another 3D design team has struck
speed-demon heaven on the PC; we were expecting huge performance hits
with the
implementation of texture-mapping and more complex 3D terrain, but everything
is running amazingly smoothly so far, given all the extras already added
in to
the core geometry engine. Lotsa stuff.

As the conclusion to Activision's tour of Battletech, Mercenaries will go all
out to provide players with more than thirty mechs to deal with, over thirty
new missions to play, full Mech Bay and Mech Factory facilities,
sophisticated
Mercenary comms office and arms trade systems, more randomization for enemy
arrival and attack, and either initially or in a subsequent add-on (we won't
promise which for the company, thank you) MercNet, full networking capability
(including modem head-to-head) for solid, fast multi-player action.

As you can see from the screenshots, Mercenaries really optimizes the
MechWarrior system, bringing it right to the front of the pack in sheer
graphics splendor. While Mercenaries concludes Battletech for Activision (for
now?), it also really launches the company's next-generation 3D simulation
engine and gameworld, something we hope will be put to exciting use down the
line in a yet-unannounced future product. Certainly Activision's teams,
working together, stand ready to take the field in first-person 3D action;
they're already doing much more sophisticated things with this kind of gaming
than most others out there. Could this company be the one to push beyond the
Guy with Big Gun in a Box? Let's wait and see.

--
John Brunson | When she left I was cold inside...
jbru...@crl.com | That look on my face was just pride...
Atlanta, GA | -The Police

[FASA TomD]

Well, nice review, but there's at least one fact wrong:

SPECTURM HOLOBYTE DID NOT ACQUIRE FASA CORPORATION.

Spectrum Holobyte is an investor with FASA Corporation in the Virtual
World Entertainment
Groupr/FASA Interactive.

FASA Corporation remains an independant entity owned by the same people
that
started it over 12 years ago.

:)

Tom Dowd
FASA Interactive