BattleTech isn't just about mechs punching one another
(Merclife)
BattleTech is the game in which giant mechs punch each other until their limbs fall off and the pilots inside those mechs boil to death. It's out next month and I'm very excited, having already spent quite a lot of time stomping about in superb turn-based skirmishes. It looks great, it plays great, all is well. Except...what about the dynamic campaign? Will it have enough menus and financial reports to really make my heart sing?
Clashes between clans in control of hulking great war machines are all well and good, but I'm here for the cashflow as well as the combat. I'm very pleased that the latest video to emerge shows lots of menus, as well as random events like pilots getting into punch-ups, bored during the long-haul trips from one planet to the next. It really is a mech management game underneath all that shiny chrome and delicious scrapping. Praise be.
It doesn't seem fair that 2018 might be home to at least two great mech games when so many years don't even get a single one to call their own. We've already had the wonderful Into the Breach, which makes clever tactical puzzles out of mechs vs monsters planet-saving, and BattleTech is looking better every time I see it. There might even be another decent BattleTech-set game this year if Mechwarriors 5 makes its planned December release and turns out well.
If that happens, 2018 will truly be the year of the mech. And I'm not even considering the possibility that actual armies of mechanised warriors will be deployed in the great war that ends civilization as we know it - that's due to kick off around September and who knows what surprises the powers that be will pull out of their arsenals.
BattleTech is out next month. No exact date yet, but the merc life starts in April.