Mechcommander 2 - more than meets the eye stragedy game
Customer Rating: 
For fans of the Battletech role-playing game, this game has elements that made that table game fun: stragedy, challege, and mech combat. For fans of the stragedy game, the will not be disappointed. While this is a stragedy game overall, it also has elements of Role playing. Examples of this include in advancements for by the Mechs, robots, and the pilots based on game performance. There are some downsides for this game: the challege level is not a linear slope or curve, but a series of mountain climbs and valleys. While much of the challege is based the players choice of mechs and pilots, there are missions which go the extremes of difficulty and ease. There is no unique customization other then, the mech. The game seems too short, to develop high pilots skill levels and missions overall. At the end of the game, I am left divided: statisfied that I have beat the game and wanting more missions.
A few bugs...
Customer Rating: .: Pros :.
I like the old school graphics. They don't show you EVERYTHING graphically (shaders, high rez textures etc..) so it lets your imagination fill in the details. I like that. When the units dont bug out, I like the style of the controls, and what you are allowed to do. It is all very fluid. The music and sound effects are very good quality as well, very good.
I like the units, and the level at which you are allowed to customize. Also I like the "rpg" elements, where your top pilots gain skills from how many kills they perform on the battle field.
.: Cons :.
I ran into a few bugs on the 2nd mission that made this game almost impossible to play.
The pathing is horrible. Units would tell me "I cannot go there" when all they needed to do is go around a building. Also when one my my units is right beside its target (an enemy building) and given an order to destroy the building, it just sits there. I think these two problems could be part of the same bug.
Another problem I would have... After I select multiple units and give them an order to go somewhere only half of them would begin to move. Sometimes all of them would move but half of them would stop half way to their destination with no visible obstruction in their path.
.: Summary :.
I like the idea overall. Its too bad the bugs get in the way of me completing the game though. I'm using Windows XP Pro 64bit and I wonder if that could be part of the problem. I am going to test this on the 32bit version some time. One more thing. I hear the MechCommander games are free and open source, so unless you want the box art, you probably shouldn't buy it, just download it for free instead =D .
