You could solo the first few missions, or frugally load out a lance or two, issue fire orders and listen to the voices of your lancemates (who you could hire from a choice of 30 or so). Very clever game.

Then there are ‘Real’ robots. The general school of design seems to be akin to jetfighters. Piloted by limited humans for the most part, and just a couple of direct hits will ruin most Real designs. Even less, in many cases. They rely on agility, speed and long-range weaponry to fight for the most part.

Somewhere between those two are the ridiculous overpowered designs that take the best of both worlds. They’ve got the speed and agility, but the near-magical levels of power and toughness. They’re fun to play as (it’s like playing as Superman, but fifty feet high!), but often inspire eye-rolling from outside viewing.

And then there’s the relatively uncommon third option – Battletech style designs are what I’ve heard described as Vertanks (Vertical Tanks), which are just as the name describes. They’re lumbering weapons platforms with tons of armor. The designs in Steel Battalion and Chrome Hounds (which has one of the most badass alternate-history settings ever – walking battleships in the 1980s!) all fit into this category.

And back on the general topic, while Mechwarrior 4 was a bit of a damp squib, I found MW4: Mercenaries to be a lot of fun. There was a lot of difference between the good/evil campaign routes, and the fan-made Mektek addons kept multiplayer viable for years.

Mechwarrior 4 was a hacked mess, but I loved giving an assault mech a bloody nose in a light mech. I’ll be following this mod and the Crysis mod closely.

The 08th MS Team miniseries – a story about generic grunt pilots, as human as you can get – might as well be Battletech if you just took the arms off the mechs and made them more hunched-over. Plenty of lurking around with passive sensors in the hopes of jump-jetting onto a target.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_koZ9T_oo

I find that sci fi is more meaningful when they arn’t just pulling “its magic/nanobots/god/plot-tech” out of their arse.

I however, loved the Chromehounds justification epic mid/upper atmosphere radiation, no satellites, no long range coms, when you have no viable artillery/planes/long range missiles and limited soldiers mechs seem much less silly.

Maybe modern tanks are different, or maybe I’m just remembering game footage rather than real-life footage, but I seem to recall that even today’s tracked, low-centre-of-gravity tanks suffer a fair bit of visible recoil firing their main gun. And futuristic as they may sound, gauss guns aren’t exactly recoilless.