Mech games

I am a big fan of Mech games. I especially liked the Mechwarrior franchise(and I think Mechwarrior 2 was one of the most important games of its time). However, the Mechwarrior franchise seems to have stopped making new games, so I've been looking for other options.

In general, I prefer games that play like Mechwarrior 2-4 rather than Armored Core:For Answer of Dynasty Warriors:Gundam. That is, I prefer the games in which the mechs move at slower speeds, don't fly much(aside from jump jets), and fight with firearms, rather than the ones in which the mechs jet around at 1000 km/h and swing beam swords at each other. I enjoy a walking customizable tank type weapon. If I want to engage in sweet martial arts fighting with weapons, then I play Soul Calibur. In truth, seeing gundam-esque mechs with a pretty much human range of movement is awesome in anime, but I find that playing them in games is generally not as much fun and disappointing because we don't yet have good control schemes for this kind of mech.

Customization of mechs is also a lot of fun for me in mech games, and in this respect I have always felt the Mechwarrior games did a good job, neither overwhelming with useless options nor making me feel like any customization I could do was not very meaningful. I had a hard time understanding what some of the customizable options actually did in Armored Core:For Answer.

So what kind of mech games are popular here in the Fakku community? What newer games would you recommend to a fan of the Mechwarrior series?

Um shiiiiiiit, if you liked mechwarrior that much then my post shouldn't really sway you anywhere, but I'll continue anyway.

Honestly I thought mechwarior sucked ass, but I only played the one on xbox. I also read the reviews and saw some gameplay of Armored Core: For Answer and it sucked ass as well. Although the first game that trully made me love giant robots and customizing the shit out of them was Armored Core 3, yea I know, not a new game. Still I wouldn't mind Armored Core to be improved so that the stats are actually clarified and the gameplay wasn't so fucked.

I played mechwarrior on computer and I can see a lot of reasons why it would be much easier to play on computer than on Xbox(I didn't even know they had Mechwarrior on Xbox. I thought that was Mech Commander?)

I don't mind older games, but my question about Armored Core 3 is: is it more like Mechwarrior in how it plays, or do you fly around at 1000mph swinging laser swords at people like in For Answer?

Like rbz said, Armored Core 3 sounds like a good choice for you. There are melee attacks, but they're secondary to the big guns. There's also the large variety of customization, and they also move like giant tanks. My only beef with it is that all the ACs I fought against seemed to have Anime Giant Robot Movement switched on, so I could barely see my opponent half the time. >.>

Another game, if you own an Xbox (not a 360) and are willing to shell out about $150 is Steel Battalion. It's fucking difficult to find a good video of some action from it though. -_-

That's what kills me though. I like the speed of the action in Mechwarrior where the top speed of the fastest mechs was about 120kph and much of the time you were in larger mechs that didn't go faster than 85. It actually makes the question of long range versus short range fighting valid and allows for the usefulness of things like the gauss rifle and lasers, as opposed to For Answer where I found the best strategy was to just equip weapons with either rapid fire or large explosive radii and just try and blast in the general area of enemies as they flew by at 1000mph. The slower speed also allows for some basic usefulness of terrain and cover. In For Answer, you basically need to always be moving at incredibly fast speeds or you're dead.

You make valid points, but seeing as I've never played Mechwarrior, I can't really argue for or against it. :P

But AC3 is MUCH slower than AC4. I found a video of some gameplay:


Granted, it does say that the mech is moving at about 120 mph with the boosters, but the thing's also the size of two apartment buildings.

Huh, seems everyone hates Animecha.

I dunno. Personally, I prefer Animecha movement. I can appriciate the appeal of the Mechwarrior realism-based Mecha, but honestly, I'd rather go at it in a mech that thinks the laws of physics can go fuck themselves.

It makes it more challenging, especially against other players, and much more satisfying. I mean, what's harder to hit, a ten story hunk of steel strafing you at 80 kph, or a hunk of steel ten stories high strafing you from above at 400 kph?

Honestly, I find Mechwarrior on highest dififuclty or online to be easy compared to, say, Armored Core 4 online or Zone of the Enders 2 on hardest difficulty.

Sounds like I need to play that one!

I think that it's actually too hard to hit things in For Answer. I found most of the nonexplosive weapons to be pretty inferior in versus type matches where the small amount of ammo wasn't that big of a drawback. It's a differently played game than Mechwarrior. Armored Core 4 definitely encourages more one sided matches because it's so hard to hit anything. I thought it was actually possible to bring things like terrain and obstacles into use in Mechwarrior though, which opens up a different skill set(and makes the AI suck more). Of course, it didn't help that Armored Core 4 had poor level design to begin with. I guess AC4 just wasn't "hard" in an interesting way for me.

I liked Armored Core series. It's pretty awesome, but you must be kinda careful at how you do your missions, I prefer an tank style with tons of weapons, but My build is great for pvp but bad for missions, because I'll finish with a negative pay all the time to pay for ammo!

Would you consider mech rpgs as well? I remeber a good one, but I cannot remeber the title. Second Front or something ? From Squareenix?

As for Mechwarrior, I've only played the tabletop version but it was good fun.

Have you tried Chromehounds? Seems like the thing you would like.

I remember playing Mechwarrior. One of the first computer games I played. I found it amusing and fun to play especially online. I'd probably go for Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries just cause it's more difficult and there are many routes to take rather than just one.

The one for original Xbox was MechAssault, they made two of them. They use the same mechs from MechWarrior, but it wasn't nearly as in depth.

Like Xel said, You may like Chromehounds on 360. It's already had its time and gone, though. There isn't really any single player, and the online isn't as populated as it use to be. But it's the closest thing I've played to MechWarrior. The customization is great, and the gameplay is good. It had potential to be even better, though.

Well, there's one mechwarrior genre mod in making for Crysis, named as Mechwarrior - Living Legends. And the mod team also got the go ahead from EA Games to use the material that is licensed for EA at the moment.

So far what they have shown in screenshots, they might be able to recreate the mechwarrior somewhat... If it becomes very popular mod (IF), the officials might put out a mechwarrior 5.. ( I still play mechwarrior 3)

Im not really a big fan of mech games, due to the fact i dont know any good ones for pc or 360. But one game i did play a long long time ago was a pc game called Gunmetal. Its a sick assgame involving you, a mecha that can transform into a plane. the good thing is that after missions, you receive new weapons options.

I pretty much play any mech games I could get my hands on, Ring of Red, Front Mission, ACE, Armored Core, Gundam...

I never played Chrome Hounds though, seems like you need to get a special controller for it before you could play it.

You are thinking of Steel Battalion. Chrome Hounds is for the 360 and just uses the normal control