Okay, so moving past a classic, we're back to giant robots, and after another one coming up soonish, you won't have to listen to me talk about giant robots beyond an occasional Metal Gear for quite a while. MechCommander is also the only RTS on this list, so I'm sorry if that is one of your favorite genres, and this will also be my second to last PC exclusive title on the list since this is technically the last PC game I was really into until maybe a few years ago when I started taking advantage of Steam.
If you actually bothered to read my entry on BattleTech (#76) on this list, you have a basic rundown of the early franchise. Remember when I mentioned that the former commander of the Star League basically gave the warring houses the middle finger and then left the galaxy to make his own Star League with hookers, gambling, and booze? Well ended up instead creating a new society of soldiers built around competition and an extreme honor system. While the group fractured into various clans, they are all honor-bound to that commander's dream of returning to the Inner Sphere and recreating the old Star League, by basically wiping out the various Houses and conquering all of it. Guess who showed up after the fourth succession war? To make matters worse for the Inner Sphere, the Clans not only still retain the knowledge of the technology from the Star League days, they've actually improved it. So when the Clans initially show up, they pretty much tear the Inner Sphere a new one and conquered large swaths of territory.
Ignoring the large amount of politics and historical battles that take place, the Clan failed to succeed in their goals. They failed to take back Terra where the manipulative ComStar controlled the Inner Sphere behind the scenes, but their frightening battle prowess and major victories were enough to actually force the various Houses of the Inner Sphere to forget their grudges and band together to form the Second Star League. Their first act was Operation BULLDOG, which was a major force built from various houses and mercenary groups to take back all the territory the Smoke Jaguars Clan had taken during the Clan Invasion. This is the setting of MechCommander and specifically details the battle to take back the planet Port Arthur.
You play the titular Mech Commander, in charge of a small force doing operations in the war effort to take back the planet. While you only start with four pilots and some pansy ass Light Mechs, you can eventually earn or salvage enough materials to build a powerful platoon of veteran fighters with mechs from both the Inner Sphere and the Clans. In addition to guiding the unit to complete the mission objectives, you're also in charge of using military funds to keep their battlemechs in top condition, change their payload, hire new pilots, and purchase new weapons and mechs to help make missions easier.
The game is a mission base RTS with different objectives for your unit to complete that range from taking out enemy bases, assassinating a powerful enemy mech, escort missions, saving prisoners of war, or reconnaissance. The mission variety is quite nice and keeps you on your toes, often forcing you to think carefully about which pilots to send and what mechs to outfit them with. Many of the missions have secret objectives that can also be completed that usually nets you both new gear to outfit your unit with, and extra money for repairs and buying new mechs.
Most pilots start out Green, except for two you are given in the early game. They move up in rank as they survive missions and can eventually become elites that can will make even the toughest missions manageable. They are ranked by their skills, which give you an idea of the type of mech they should be piloting. A pilot with great Sensor skills and little gunnery skills should probably not be piloting a combat focused Hunchback AC2, while a combat expert shouldn't be piloting a reconnaissance focused Raven or lightly armed Commando with a Jump Jet build. While I don't know if this was programmed into the game or not, the pilots have personalities you can read on their bios, but my friends and I have noticed that certain pilots seem to show off funny traits. For instance, I've always found the pilot Beast to have incredibly dumb luck. If he's not the only unit that walks away from a mission virtually unscathed, then he's usually the one with a sliver of health that somehow manages to survive it. He also tends to be the guy who lands the most critical hits, for some reason, which made him an excellent pilot for the Hollander and Hunchback. Lynx on the other hand, and this happened with all of my friends, is the guy who has a bad habit of wandering off from the group. I don't know why he does this, but he's the one who forced me to restart a mission when he discovered a Mad Cat in Mission 3 to both his and my own misfortune. Perhaps it's just our imagination, but it really does bring an interesting human element to the gameplay as you start giving your pilots imaginary traits or notice odd quirks with them.
Speaking of the mecha, you have a whole variety of options in the game. You start off with two simple Commandos and a Firestarter, but can eventually acquire things like a Hunchback, Atlas, or Centurion through the shop. More mechs unlock as you successfully complete missions. You're even able to customize them by buying different variants with their own strengths and weaknesses like the speedy but incredibly fragile Jump Jet versions, the more combat focused Weapon variation, and the defensive and great for escort mission Armor variety. The real challenge is salvaging enemy mechs from missions. If you can defeat the enemy mech units without totally destroying them, it's possible to salvage them and add them to your arsenal. This is incredibly invaluable as it is usually the only means of acquiring Clan mechs and weapons, which as I stated above, are incredibly powerful compared to the Inner Sphere equivalents. Unfortunately, whether you can salvage a mech largely comes down to luck, and so you may find yourself replaying the same mission over and over to finally get that one unique mech you want.
Speaking of which, this game can be quite challenging, in fact, it's one of the few games on this list I have never actually beaten due to getting stuck on a particularly nasty mission that appears late in the game. Part of this can sometimes be that your intel is bad or just poorly focused. For instance, the second mission only gives you an idea of what is around the mission objective points, it does not talk about what else is on the map which includes a really nasty Medium class Hollander Mech sporting a Clan version Gauss Rifle which will pick apart your light weight mechs like wet tissue paper. The third mission is more infamous for having a goddamn Timber Wolf (Mad Cat) wandering by its lonesome self on the bottom of the map, and even if you somehow salvaged that Hollander from mission 2, the Mad Cat can easily destroy it by itself.
One of my favorite memories of this game, is actually setting up a trap for that Mad Cat and eventually beating and salvaging it, so the next dozen or so missions become utter cakewalks in comparison. This game was a real treat for me in middle school and high school, due to playing it along with two other mecha fan friends I had, so we would share stories of our exploits and share secrets. It was probably the last time I ever really did this with anyone outside a forum, so this game gives a warm nostalgia to me about those times.
Also, despite what you see in the video intro, while it is possible for that unit configuration to win a fight against the Mad Cat, it pretty much requires the enemy pilot to be both dumb, and the heroes incredibly lucky cause that mech should have wiped the floor with that whole unit. Additionally, hooray for campy live action videos from Western Strategy games. I really need to give Command and Conquer a try someday.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 03-17-2023 at 09:47 PM.
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