S
shurai
Guest
Folks-
I posted this to another forum, but here it is for the curious:
So I saw this new game at the gaming store in my town. Mechwarrior it said. I remember Battletech; Hell, what self-respecting gamer doesn't? But this game is different in that 1) a starter box costs as much as a full set of the original Battletech, 2) It is collectible in the Magic: The Gathering sense, and 3) its gameplay feels different from the original tactical game.
How does the game work? Mechwarrior: Dark Age is like Mage Knight, but with Battlemechs, essentially. Some features, like heat and minimum ranges for weapons, work the same, but others get abstracted out thanks to the Mage Knight way of doing things. I don't even like Battletech that much compared to other mecha tactical games (read: Heavy Gear), but I used to play it all the time so there's a soft spot in my heart for my good old Shadowhawk, Warhammer, Wasp, Atlas, etc.
In some ways the new game is superior. The game seems to play faster, and it certainly requires less number crunching. The game is tactically interesting after a fashion, though the decisions made on the board are of a different nature than the original game. Conventional units fight more often than in the original game, too, which most would consider an advantage since it broadens the game's possibilities.
The mechs themselves are beautifully if grittily painted. They don't hold to the original designs too much, but to a bunch of 14-year-olds who've never seen Battletech before, that won't matter. Neo-grognards like myself don't like it much though, because they new designs don't have the old Robotech feeling or the later edition's chunky feel either. Instead, many of the mechs look more skeletal, with thin, rickety looking arms and legs. Also, the game seems to suffer from Warhammer's problem of having too many absurd melee weapons like chainsaws and circular whirling spikey things. One of the coolest things about the original Battletech, to me, was that the mechs looked and felt tough and strong, but the new ones seem to be more fragile. Remember the old Warhammer (the mech, no the GW scam)? That guy just looked intimidating. But the new Atlas looks like a refugee from a Gwar video.
My main problem with the game is my a moral exception to games where you can spend more money to win more often. It's the reason I quit Magic, the reason I constantly heckle the Warhammer geeks at the game store in my town, and the reason I won't play this game. I spent $25 once upon a time to play all the Battletech I want, and I don't need to pay warhammer-like costs (per fig anyway) to have fun smashing things with big robots.
Gameplay matters most to me, so I don't hold much truck with expensive games with pretty bits, especially if the gameplay is only passable as in Mechwarrior: Dark Age. People who like pretty bits and collecting small figurines will enjoy this game. But for me, paying more than $30 for any game is a little much, and as we all know, the expenditures for MWA are likely to be in the hundreds for serious players.
-S
I posted this to another forum, but here it is for the curious:
So I saw this new game at the gaming store in my town. Mechwarrior it said. I remember Battletech; Hell, what self-respecting gamer doesn't? But this game is different in that 1) a starter box costs as much as a full set of the original Battletech, 2) It is collectible in the Magic: The Gathering sense, and 3) its gameplay feels different from the original tactical game.
How does the game work? Mechwarrior: Dark Age is like Mage Knight, but with Battlemechs, essentially. Some features, like heat and minimum ranges for weapons, work the same, but others get abstracted out thanks to the Mage Knight way of doing things. I don't even like Battletech that much compared to other mecha tactical games (read: Heavy Gear), but I used to play it all the time so there's a soft spot in my heart for my good old Shadowhawk, Warhammer, Wasp, Atlas, etc.
In some ways the new game is superior. The game seems to play faster, and it certainly requires less number crunching. The game is tactically interesting after a fashion, though the decisions made on the board are of a different nature than the original game. Conventional units fight more often than in the original game, too, which most would consider an advantage since it broadens the game's possibilities.
The mechs themselves are beautifully if grittily painted. They don't hold to the original designs too much, but to a bunch of 14-year-olds who've never seen Battletech before, that won't matter. Neo-grognards like myself don't like it much though, because they new designs don't have the old Robotech feeling or the later edition's chunky feel either. Instead, many of the mechs look more skeletal, with thin, rickety looking arms and legs. Also, the game seems to suffer from Warhammer's problem of having too many absurd melee weapons like chainsaws and circular whirling spikey things. One of the coolest things about the original Battletech, to me, was that the mechs looked and felt tough and strong, but the new ones seem to be more fragile. Remember the old Warhammer (the mech, no the GW scam)? That guy just looked intimidating. But the new Atlas looks like a refugee from a Gwar video.
My main problem with the game is my a moral exception to games where you can spend more money to win more often. It's the reason I quit Magic, the reason I constantly heckle the Warhammer geeks at the game store in my town, and the reason I won't play this game. I spent $25 once upon a time to play all the Battletech I want, and I don't need to pay warhammer-like costs (per fig anyway) to have fun smashing things with big robots.
Gameplay matters most to me, so I don't hold much truck with expensive games with pretty bits, especially if the gameplay is only passable as in Mechwarrior: Dark Age. People who like pretty bits and collecting small figurines will enjoy this game. But for me, paying more than $30 for any game is a little much, and as we all know, the expenditures for MWA are likely to be in the hundreds for serious players.
-S
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
