MechWarrior 4: Vengeance Preview

Visuals, Physics, and Combat...

I'm on fire!

Where, in the hell, are you?

During my time at LA's finest game expo, I had the pleasure of mixing it up with a couple of enemy mechs in MW4. One thing instantly caught my attention, and that is the significant "at a first glance" visual improvement over MW3. Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming on MW3's eye-candy, on the contrary, the visuals were the best aspect of the game, but the difference in MechWarrior 4 is truly amazing... I haven't seen many of the ballyhooed features like: night missions, fog, rain, snow, blizzards and lightning, but from what I saw, the weapons, and of course the models looked amazing... Missile trails, lasers, all seemed like something you'd expect to see on a next generation console... Yes, come to think of it, that is the exact feeling I got while watching MechWarrior 4. The mech models looked much more plastic, partly because of the excellent design, partly because of the great texturing... I haven't seen much of the terrain but developers promise to replace desolate, sparsely populated battlefields with a rich and dynamic universe inhabited by armed allies, noncombatants (does this imply NPCs) and deadly antagonists. Most importantly though, the mechs moved so damn smooth, it was just a real pleasure watching the heavy metal torsos bounce across the terrain... A lot of work has been put into making the mech animations perfectly fluid. Possibly, that's one of the reasons why MW4 made me think of next-gen consoles. Would you believe me if I told you that each mech features a couple hundred animations? Each of the steal beasts moves in a specific fashion... I wonder if we'll be able to tell the model from a far, just by detecting the way it moves across the terrain? Adding so many animations not only increases the overall visual impression, it also ads loads of fun, and even more tactics into the gameplay.

Without going into further specifics of the engine, I can tell you that Dave McCoy is currently working on "the application for his third patent for graphics technology", which will appear in the game. I don't know what that's all about, but I do know that Mechwarrior 4 looks good, damn good. The team is also working on a more "realistic" physics engine, having in mind the usual limitations of the giant robot game. Come to think of it, the game felt much more action-oriented during my brief scrimmage experience. I certainly didn't know all the commands, but the usual setup played a lot faster than in any previous mech game... I almost felt like I was playing a FPS. Was it because of the smooth animations, new physics model, or did the team pay special attention to the overall game speed in all of its nuances? I can't really say at this moment. In any case, there is a noticeable increase in game speed over the prequel, at least in the alpha I got to playtest. It's very possible that the combination of a more sophisticated animation, and new physics actually adds to the combat "feeling", similar to the "feel of the game" phenomenon in Quake 3.

In the end, all that we can do is wait and see... And you can bet your sweet, corn bread augmented ass we will. Mechwarrior 4 seems to be a worthy successor of the mighty Battletech throne. The concept still has enough spunk to make my mouth water. I'm hoping you feel the same way too...