Battle Tech Returns with MechWarrior Online

[JujuShinobi]

As many of you may not know, Piranha Games has released an open beta version of a new MechWarrior game called MechWarrior Online. The game promises to listen to the community and make it a wonderful and amazing experience for everyone.

I have played this game for about over 50 hours and I would classify myself as an above average player. Although I am only 16 and barely know anything about the Battle Tech history, I would say I know enough to state my stand.

MechWarrior Online is a first person mech simulator (no its not like Gandum) which revolves around the Battle Tech universe. As of right now, clans have not invaded yet so if you are looking forward to mechs like the Daishi or the Vulture, you will have to wait until September.

Currently, there are only about 18 mechs to choose from ranging from Lights, Medium, Heavy, and Assault mechs. These mechs each suite different play styles and you can customize these mechs to your liking. I personally play every weight class quite well except Assaults as they are way to slow and bulking for me even though they are practically a meat shield that has a lot of firepower. My personal favorite mech in the game right now is the Catapult CPL-K2 running a sort of sniper build.

The game is right now in kind of a late beta. A lot of the problems from its release in October 2012 have been fixed. But that's not to say its bug free. The main problem as of right now is hits not registering. There have been multiple cases where I fire an alpha strike (fire all my weapons at once) on an enemy and it did not register, resulting my my unfortunate death. But the game devs are working very hard to fix the issue. Other than that, I would say the game is near perfection.

For those of you now interested to play the game, I have to give you a little hint. This game is not for impatient people and requires a lot of teamwork with good communication. This game is not like call of duty where one man can decimate the entire enemy team by yourself (which I have admittedly done before somehow) as you will be greeted with a face full of lasers, missiles and auto cannon rounds. You can choose to play alone but you will need to be a very cunning player in order to get the victory. If you are looking for a team but do not have a clan, hope onto nogutsnogalaxy.net and join their TeamSpeak server to find teams. The community there is very friendly so you should be fine. But as with all communities, you have the occasional jerk. And the server admins do not tolerate trolling and griefing well.

For those of you who do not learn as fast as others, you will be disappointed to know that the game has a steep learning curve and requires hours of practice. I personally had a kill death ratio of 0.69 when I just started out. But after long hours, I got it up to 1.06.

I hope my rant of sorts has gotten you interested in the game and I hope you will join me and become a fellow MechWarrior. Oh, and did I mention this game is COMPLETELY FREE?

The minimum require is an Intel Core 2 Duo with a 8800GT. However, I would recommend no less than a A10-5800k with 1866MHz memory if you just want to play on low settings. If not, get an Intel Core i5-4670k with a 7950 for the best experience in full HD.

Here is a video about me using my Catapult with some friends on the NGNG TeamSpeak server if you wonder how the game is like