A moment of appreciation if you will for the humble giant robot, mecha or walking tank.
What struck me is how much of the core experience of yesteryear has been preserved in MechWarrior 5. The core game play feels very much intact from it's late nineties/early noughties heyday. You pilot a mecha and if you have found your way here you probably won't need an explanation of what that is. If by some means you are hear without that knowledge, it's a giant metal colossus, an epic tank on legs that bestrides the land laying waste to your enemies. When it's not laying waste to enemies, it's laying waste to buildings, or protecting same from being reduced to same by other equally enterprising individuals piloting their own towering death engines. You know, just making their way in the universe same as you or I.
Private initiative is very much the order of the day in this, what is technically the BattleTech universe. You run a private mercenary company making money from hiring it's services out to the highest bidder in a vast interstellar dominion divided up by and contested between various space empires a thousand years from now. You are but a single proxy amongst many in a series of proxy wars and it's great for your bottom line. Various sides vie for your services, various sides find themselves on the receiving end of those services. You generally don't get too sentimental about who you get attached to as you may find yourself on the opposing side from them at any point. The causes of these conflicts are many, too many to document here but as always the internet has got you covered if you wish to comb over the story in fine detail. Suffice to say it's a vaguely dystopian feel to the lore and the universe. One in which a near constant state of warfare amongst the stars has impeded human progress giving us a universe that is an intriguing mix of the advanced and the anachronistic. Thematically similar to the Warhammer 40K universe, but a lot less overtly grimdark.
For me, what really matters here are the mecha. The essential joy of piloting said machines forming the bedrock of the experience alongside managing the finances of your company. Whether it be the smaller, faster more versatile machines or the larger, lumbering heavyweights of the mecha world, it's the experience of taking these machines to battle that has really etched itself into my brain. MechWarrior games old and new take great pains to really capture a feeling. Mainly the feeling of being in a giant murder bot in the midst of battle but also other feelings as well, one part joy to two parts nervous trepidation. Arguably the latest game captures this the best given the gleaming presentation and top-notch sound-work but nostalgia, (that always reliable nostalgia) tells me the older games weren't remiss in this regard either.
I should say this is not a review, I find it difficult to be impartial about a great many subjects and giant walking tanks are definitely one of those things. It captures my imagination you might say, something about the sheer feel of it. The growl of the engines, the ambient lights in the cockpit, the enjoyment of nailing a shot that disables the leg of a distant opponent. Not to mention that feeling of dread as you glimpse a small armada of enemy forces approaching you from across the barren wasteland and that slight sense of panic as your systems overheat and your death machine becomes a paperweight for the precious few seconds it takes to restart. None of these qualities are unique to these games of course but it's an experience that I consider to be greatly more than the sum of its parts here.
There a great many manifestations of mecha in popular culture to put it lightly. I still remember with great fondness watching the anime Patlabor for the first time back in the late 90's, I make no excuses for my unadulterated enjoyment of Pacific Rim. i absolutely loved the game Hawken that came out a few years back and which unceremoniously died a death without too many people mourning its passing. In fact I'd argue there's not nearly enough giant robots in popular Western culture. It's a very recognisably Japanese phenomenon but there is more than enough to latch onto if you know where to look.
Indeed when i think of anime, I tend to think of the sleeker model of mecha that predominate throughout. Machines that by comparison, are almost streamlined in their presentation and graceful in their movement. They are very much something you could almost picture on a shelf in an Apple store. On the flip side you have the more industrial designs of BattleTech. Mecha that look like they have rolled off a factory production line somewhere, more possessed of sheer destructive potential than cosmetic appeal. Machines more overtly mechanical but no less aesthetically pleasing for it. I don't pick favourites of course, I love all giant robots equally.
There are a great many more manifestations of the form that I haven't gone into here for reasons of time, space and the patience of my readers. This was more a general all-purpose salute to these glorious machines from yours truly prompted by my recent experience. There are some mainstays of the genre I have still yet to check out myself, your Gundam's and Neon Genesis Evangelion's and so forth. My backlog isn't just confined to games after all, why there is no form of media where I don't have a list of things yet to be consumed that is about a mile long. No doubt there will be more thoughts on these when I get to them in the fullness of time.
Where was I? Oh yes MechWarrior 5, a good game that's ticking a great many boxes for me. I highly recommend the experience. I will probably be playing this for some time to come yet. Anyhow, some unambiguous praise for you there to break up the non-stop cavalcade of misery, stay with us as we will shortly return to our regularly scheduled misanthropy. Next up, 500 words on Watch Dogs and how I'm certain it contains next to no giant robots at all...
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