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Very Boring

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 9
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This has got to be the most boring game I've ever played. All you do is shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot at a target for several minutes until it blows up. I don't mind shooters but it gets rather tedious when you have to spend so much time on just one target.

The most expensive mission pack yet!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

It seems like the folks at Microsoft have decided to squeeze every possible nickel out of diehard MW fans, without really giving them much in return. Given the outageous price, the cheesy intro, and the dubious claim of 50 new missions (15 of them are just arena matches, and many others are "recycled" to pad the total number), the emphasis is clearly on getting as much money as possible, with minimal coding and design time. If this is all we have to look forward to, RIP MW saga.

Little if any work seems to have gone into updating a rather dated graphics engine. A few more detailed skins, and "new" hw that's really just minor tweaks of the old hw, doesn't impress much. In fact, the engine is a bit more sluggish - I can easily play Vengeance and Black Knight at 1600x1280, Mercenaries is often choppy even at 1280x1024.

The missions are nothing special. They all seem to be either incredibly easy, or else 4 to 1 odds slugfests, without much middle ground. Very few offer any opportunity to choose your tactics and improve the odds, and the only real thinking the game requires seems to be aimed more at Business majors than gamers. As for having 8 mechs, ok, so now I have even more people getting in my way and not doing what I told them to. Big deal.

One continuing annoyance - the interface for working with mechs and missions is as pathetic as ever. I guess "real programmers" don't do menus?

All in all, Mercenaries is little more than a highly overpriced mission pack - and frankly, the missions in Black Knight are a still lot more fun. It's time for Microsoft to stop milking this game, and actually improve it. When you finish Mercs, there's a very strong hint that a mission pack is in the future. After spending fifty bucks on this one, I'm not sure I'm interested.

Do yourself a favor and get Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I play the actual board game and after playing this game I am disappointed. If you are into a huge arcade slugfest with little or no realism and wizkids abomination looks then get it. It's a game all about the bigger you are and the more ballistics you have the more kills you get.

They should have kept the game as a simulator but they changed it into a jacked up 1st person/3rd person shooter because of non BattleTech players who are too confused about controls and how a 'Mech actually works. So what you get is a dumbed down game with no real BattleTech in it (aren't energy weapons the primary weapons for a Mech anyway? So why are those so week.) but something that competes with all the stupid gundam. You can't even make some of the variants for the Clan `Mechs in this game or get into actual designing!

Fan of BattleTech? Get the board game, MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries because it is the greatest game I have ever played and MechWarrior 3 if you want something pretty close to the board game. Support the Classic BattleTech community, not a mainstream Microsoft butcher. I hope the money I put forth in this game will make MechWarrior 5 right, if it ever comes out...

One final thing, the most important thing is the Clan Technological edge over the Inner Sphere. Well, that does not exist in MechWarrior 4 and ruins one of the important BattleTech aspects.

Mechwarrior 4 freelance

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was stoked to get this game when I heaard about it. I loved that MW:Vengance limited what type of weapons you could mount in the mech chassis. That said, Mercenaries is a vast improvement with the ability to move to different planets and carry out missions for different factions. It says that it's fully compatible with the two offical mech packs so I purchased them as well. This was less then true as none of the new mech designes were avaialable for purchase or salvage in the single player story, but the new weapons and electronics are available. The mech pack designs do show up in the solaris arenas as oppoents but I have yet to receive one as salvage or on the free market.

Pretty Good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 27 / 28
Date: November 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Bought this yesterday, played for a few hours...

I'm a big Mechwarrior series fan, I ve been waiting for this one for a while. Overall, this is a very good game, but it has pro's and cons. I liked the addition of the money management, it's not enough to just slap a bunch of big weapons onto the mech - you have to be able to afford it. You also have to pay your lancemates, and they all require different salary (BTW, you get what you pay for). Fixing your damaged mechs also costs money(surprise!), as well as traveling from planet to planet. The tournament single player missions are also kinda cool, but don't expect a large payout - after winning the tournament my mech was so badly damaged that prize money was less than what it cost to fix it.

Now the bad: I guess I just expected a new Mechwarrior game, which this isn't. It should have been marketed (and priced) as an expansion pack. The terrains and environments are nothing special, actually the jungle is quite annoying, you have to blow up most of the trees before you can get a shot at your opponent. Nothing has been added to the gameplay itself (but nothing lost either).

The bottom line: If you are a die-hard fan of the Mech series (like me) or you never played Mechwarrior before, get this one. Otherwise wait for the price to come down a little. (I don't think expansion packs are worth $50)

Dated but awsome game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 20 / 22
Date: November 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

One of the first indications of the quality of Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries is the opening movie. No it's not some slick CGI that we are used to, but a mix of canned gameplay footage with a good voice over telling the player next to nothing about what is going on. It sounds good, and looks good enough, but for an opening movie I would expect more. This sums up the overall game. It's great in it's own way, but is lacking the polish that we have come to expect. That said, the actual game is great fun and it's one solid experience. If only we did not have to wait for 2 years to get it.

The single player campaign is interesting but short. It balances between giving the player a lot of freedom but not total control. This way the player can still make choices but still has to work towards "unlocking" the next set of missions. The missions them selves range from the standard search and destroy, defend the base and escort the convoy. But to mix it up you can often take the other side in the conflict. For example, one mission will have you defend the peace talks between two warring governments. At the same time there is another mission that will have you instead attack the peace talks. You cannot do both and the results are different. Or you can just leave the planet and go on to another contract. It's fun to go back and see the different outcomes.
The economy from Mechwarrior2 Mercenaries is back and works well. It adds another layer of depth and strategy that also helps make you feel like a mercenary. However unless you are a really bad Mechwarrior that loses Mechs left and right, you will never really be hard pressed for cash.

Of course you will have to keep your unit well armed with the cash you earn with various Mechs. The selection of Mechs is impressive, and I really enjoyed some of the new designs. Some of the old ones have gotten a nice face-lift with higher detail and higher res skins. There is an equally large selection of weapons and many of them have been revised in some way. The autocannons have new sounds, pulse lasers fire faster, etc. Fortunately the balance has been kept. All this helps inject some fresh interest in a game that is now 2 years old.

However that is where the game is weak. The engine used is getting old. This is the first Mechwarrior game where the graphics have been less than state of the art. The developers promised that they were just now able to use the full potential of the engine. But it is still a far cry from competing with he latest Unreal and Quake powered games. That said, the graphics are at least good enough. Only in a few areas does the game really look bad. It does manage to look improved over Mechwarrior4. It has lots of nice particle effects and better textures. The Mechs still look pretty good and the sound is well done. However the simple water effects, plain skybox, elementary lighting, crude damage decals, and 2D tress all tell of an engine past its prime.

The game does a few things that previous Mechwarrior games never did. Such as giving the player command of 2 full lances (8 Mechs total) rather than the usual four Mechs. The pilots are rather generic but they at least have distinct voices that give you some illusion of character. The voice acting through out will not win any awards but does a good job of creating atmosphere that is just right for a Mechwarrior game. There is also more story content told by text in the form of news reports that help flesh out the story. This is a welcome change from Mechwarrior 4s silly little live action clips.

In the end if you are a Mechwarrior fan than this game should at least entertain you. Anyone familiar with the Battletech story line will be glad to see some important characters and planets later on in the game. But just don't expect Mechwarrior5 or anything too impressive from the engine. If you can look past that, the experience is well worth the money.

Welcome back Merc

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Make sure you check in at Outreach and equip your mech with only the best equipment ripped from your enemies dead bodies. Ahh...its good to be back.

Naturally this game is not the first to claim the title mercenary, nor is it the first Mechwarrior game to do so. It is also not the best Merc game so don't buy it because someone says so. However, it is a great game that is worth its now reduced price. Let me detail...

In Merc, you must earn money and buy mechs, something different from Mechwarrior 4. You also have the option of not only picking the missions you play but also the worlds you play them on. Near the end players can also choose to whom they give their alliance, a fun if questionable ability. I personally would have liked a third option to choose neither side. So ultimetly the player now has control over the direction of the game.

The mechs themselves are again the main feature and main drawback. Running around in a fifty foot tall death machine never gets old. Taking that same death machine and slapping all the best equipment on it is without compare. This is fun stuff. Now the negaitves.

These fifty foot death machines are damn near indestructable. I don't claim to understand physics at the level of Archimedes but if a hyper sonic guass slug impacts a solid object traveling at many times the speed of sound, anything under fifty tons is likely to be blown off its little feet. However the light and medium mechs shrug off repeated attacks of this sort. They actually barely even notice when you hit them with multiple such attacks, something I find unconchanable. I also felt that the idea of salvage was a little weak. No matter what mechs you kill and how you kill them, the salvage is always the same. Also, throughout the game vast numbers of chassis will come your way and unless you are getting brutalized every mission you can end the game with about 50 different mechs. YOu can also expect to run out of all the major weapon systems if you do not covet them and buy them whenever they are in shop. Its an interesting combe...too many mechs and not enough of the major weapons.

This problem is exasperbated by the Mech Warrior 4 customization system, where only certain weapons can go in certain slots. So a laser heavy mech must remain so. For a player like me, who grew up on the Nova clan mech(12 medium lasers) this is a little less fun. I also miss the ability to repair my mehc at the well placed depots in the mission. I thought this went a long ways towards making the game fun and challegning while letting less skilled players get through. In this game, where players face more enemies than ever before and have even more near worthless squad mates to protect, not being able to repair your mech is a serious handicap.

There is more but I am beggining to ramble and loss my focus so I will wrap this up. Great game, some handicaps, not as good as the origional Mechwarrior Mercenary. But it works on XP machines so...

Best Mech Sim game yet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Actually give this 4-1/2 stars. This is the best of all of the Mechwarrior series. Mercenaries takes you even deeper into the world of mech combat. You are not only piloting some awesome mechs, managing weapons and resources, but must now make some choices about alliances, missions, and lancemates which by the way you can have up to 7 now. (not to mention the graphics are gorgeously rendered, with enough detail to give perspective on the size of these monsters). The only thing I would add to the wish list on this one is being given the capability to carry pilots from one game to the next. If you like good simulation games (NOT Arcade style), this is a MUST BUY!!!!

DOES NOT INCLUDE MECH PAK MECHS!!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Great game but it DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MECHS FROM EITHER OF THE MECH PAKS ("Clan" and "Inner Sphere") as suggested by:
"A gamer from Mobile, Alabama United States."

I bought the game after reading that review and WAS REALLY TICKED WHEN I REALIZED THAT HE WAS _WRONG_!!!! CHECK YOUR FACTS BEFORE YOU POST HERE!!

Keeps me busy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the first Mechwarrior game I've bought... ever. So I don't have anything to compare this to.
To say the least, it's a VERY fun game. Kind of straightforward though, and not much to each of the missions. You just choose your mission, and go blow stuff up. They usuallly don't take any more than 10 minutes a piece, which can be nice, but it would also be nice to be able to do a long, drug out mission from time to time where it involves more then just blowing stuff up.
The sounds are awesome and the Mech graphics are great, but the terrain maps [stinks]. 2-D sprite trees, people, bushes, etc... That is the one thing that I cannot stand about this game is the NICE quality graphics of the mechs meshed with the not-so-good looking graphics of the backgrounds. Oh well, it doesn't take away from the gameplay.
As a final note, I'd say if you're a veteran fan of Mechwarrior, don't buy this game, as you will probably be disappointed. BUT if you're a first-timer like me, you'll have quite a bit of fun with it!

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