As for the game, I think it’s great. :D

The customization system was quite good, not /quite/ as freeform as that indie game ‘Master Plan’, but more variety and more balanced. There was a strong sense of scale, most Chromehounds were quite slow, lumbering, they could dish out and take a lot of fire. Flying was merely the fevered dream of a madman (there wasn’t any).

The main failing of Chromehounds was that the developers have given it no real support. Years after its release, you still have to wait through ten or twelve slooow “X has given money to his nation” announcements that mean absolutely nothing to you and that crowd out any news you’d actually want to hear.

On another tangent, I quite liked Armored Core 4(another XB360 game). It was very much in the anime mecha style, fast, maneuverable, included lots of swords in addition to machineguns, bazookas, etc, but the fidelity with which it delivered that experience really impressed me. I’m fairly sure it’s from the same developers but the customization was completely different. You could put together a mech that zipped around like a bee t and could fly for minutes at a time.

I wish I could still run HeavyGear 2, but it doesn’t support either Windows XP or modern CPUs, can’t remember which. The first HeavyGear PC game tried some interesting things, not really being faithful in the play and customization of the ‘Gears themselves but bringing across the idea of a standard military campaign from the sourcebooks complete with dueling, landships, all that jazz. C&C / Wing Commander – style cinematics (as in, actors).

I much preferred the gameplay of HeavyGear 2 though, and the way you could mount various weapons on different hardpoints, and that panel that let you tweak armor, speed, maneuverability, firecontrol and such was a little more in line with how I thought the pen&and paper ‘Gears should be translated. Never finished it, the campaign had a lot of welcome variety but was also a bit uneven, and I quit during the mission that asked me to jump over a bunch of underground moats in a tunnel …

The unnusual thing about the whole HeavyGear theme that I’d like to see brough tback, is that the ‘Gears (mechs) aren’t the end-all be-all battlefield juggernauts. They’re maybe up to 5 meters tall, they can’t have the biggest guns or the heaviest armor, they essentially fill the role of Stryker IFV’s at best, or lightweight scout Humvees bristling with sensors and radar-absorbing paint. Tanks, gunships, jets, even infantry get to shine in their own roles, the ‘Gears are just the best combination of maneuverability, capabilities and power.

There was a Battletech MMO about (guessing here) 5 years ago. My brother was in the beta, I watched it, seemed sort of interesting though little more than a battletech team deathmatch game apparently. Got cancelled. :P There are probably still Battletech MU*’s out there, though my brother quit playing them so I haven’t been kept abreast of their state.

I don’t think anybody’s quite figured out the formula for a good vehicular MMO that keeps people playing. Probably something along the lines of EVE, let them find their own goals and you’ll have a core of people that never leave.

One love to you, Gillen.

Chromehounds was allegedly one of the most dull singleplayer experiences ever- but the online MMO battles were said to be good. A good acquaintence of mine waged clan wars on it for a good year or two, and it was apparently fantastique. Certainly sounded like prog action fun.

I don’t mean to suggest that there are no anime where mechs are big and clunky and so on, but anime is where the fast, nimble ones mostly come from.

It would do a mint!

I thought Chromehounds was one? For the 360? Though I don’t know if it was any good or not.

A blend of stomping along at high speed, blasting out missiles and anti personnel rounds to fight infantry and aircraft, and then fixed positions to deploy your main guns against other mechs could be nice if balanced properly.

and who wouldn’t want to play an 40K Epic MMO where you were Titans, eh? Little men living in your feet, shooting wildly as you stomp your big foot down into the middle of an infantry squad. Hah, transformers!

I may not be the biggest fan of Big Robot games (or indeed much of a fan at all), but far too many of them make the reverse mistake of _really_ playing just like an FPS, except (to imply the momentum of 25 tonnes of metal on the go) like your standard FPS guy is running in treacle with controls about as intuitive as the original GTA.

There has to be some balance between the two somewhere; the _idea_ of big robots clouting each other is great.

Exoskeleton size being the only real choice at the start building into a make your own class type game, hopefully with a system to stop the forcing of cookie cutter builds.

or a mad max style mmo thats not shit, just noticed im now repeating you but with slightly different words.