Mechwarrior 3 Thoughts

[Nagorak]

Recently I was inspired by the news of the new MW to reinstall and play MW3. I played through MW2 and MW2 Mercs back in the day (and more recently played through them both again, plus Ghost Bear's legacy), and I really enjoyed them. For some reason, I never played MW3. I got it when it came out, but I was distracted by other games and never played past Op1, Mission 2 at the most.

Anyway, I managed to get it running on an old comp in WinXP (doesn't work with modern ATi graphics cards for whatever reason, so I had to use a 9800). The game was pretty fun, and I thought the weapon balance was much better than in Mech 2. Autocannons actually worked worth a damn, and you really appreciated how devastating some of the assault mechs could be. If you end up in close with an Annihilator then you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.

The only issues I had with the game was that the inventory management was just an annoyance, and your lance mates were kind of stupid. Your MFBs could only hold a certain amount of tonnage, so after each mission you had to go through and try to drop stuff and pick other stuff up. The whole interface was clunky and none of your weapons were sorted alphabetically. I wanted to play MW, not deal with inventory management BS. It would have been better if they just had not included the tonnage limit.

As far as your lance mates go, they did OK for the most part, but they had a tendency to stupidly get in close against mechs that would just rip them apart at close range (the above mentioned Annihilator), and I found myself cursing their stupidity on more than one occasion.

Strangely, while the simulation was closer to the Battletech rules and the combat was way better than MW2, I think I sort of had more fun with MW2 and Mercs. The overall storyline of MW3 seemed kind of bland, and toward the end (last OP) I found myself confused about exactly what was happening a lot of the time. It probably didn't help that I often could not understand the radio signals in game because the weapons totally drowned them out. The volume of the radio chatter should have been increased compared to the weapon volume for sure.

The setting for the game just wasn't that great. It would have been better if we were taking part in some epic "historical" battles like the battle for Strana Mechty, not just off on some little world behind enemy lines. In MW2 you take part in the Wolf/Jade Falcon refusal war, and in Mercs you end up helping to defend some of the main worlds against the invading clans. The MW3 storyline just didn't really have the same epic feel to it. The amount of forces you encounter in the game seemed pretty skimpy, and it seemed a little far fetched that we'd even have a chance without some more serious support (if we'd ever encountered more than one star at a time we'd be screwed).

I'm not really sure I like where the MW series has gone, with you just fighting over a single world. In MW4 you just fight over a single, relatively unimportant world, and it seems like that is how it's going to be in MW5. I'd rather take part in some epic battles on many worlds, not just get locked down to one location.

All the said, it's still a good game and I'm glad I finally played it. Now I just have to play through the MW3 expansion pack, and then maybe it's on to a replay of the soon to be free MW4.

[Cowzrul]

Have you played MW4 Mercs? I dunno if the storyline will feel suitably "epic" to you, but the battles are significantly larger, and happen on a variety of planets. (I know nothing about the Battletech universe, so I can't comment on the historical importance of what happens in the game.)

[SubCog]

honestly my biggest problems with the old mechwarrior titles is the lack of widescreen support. If I could get widescreen versions, I'd go back and re-play them all.

Installing MW3 and seeing it without widescreen makes me cry.

[Nagorak]

Originally Posted by Cowzrul

Have you played MW4 Mercs? I dunno if the storyline will feel suitably "epic" to you, but the battles are significantly larger, and happen on a variety of planets. (I know nothing about the Battletech universe, so I can't comment on the historical importance of what happens in the game.)

I haven't played MW4 Mercs. I'll get to that once I get through the MW3 expansion and MW4.

I think one problem with the combat in MW3 is that while it was good, and accurate, you couldn't really fight through a whole star of enemy mechs at once without losing all of your lance mates, as well as being in danger of going down yourself. Because you had to worry about salvaging enough mechs to keep your lance mates piloting something, it made it so if they went down it was a huge setback.

In MW2 you were superior enough to your enemies in terms of skill that you could mow through a ton of enemy mechs (plus a lot of mechs were equipped with weapons that were just useless, like pretty much every AC, due to the flawed mechanics of MW2). With ACs working and PPCs actually being effective (not just slow moving fire balls), the weapons are just a lot more devastating and you can go down pretty quickly.

I liked that MW3 was more of a challenge than MW2 though.

[Nagorak]

Originally Posted by SubCog

honestly my biggest problems with the old mechwarrior titles is the lack of widescreen support. If I could get widescreen versions, I'd go back and re-play them all.

Installing MW3 and seeing it without widescreen makes me cry.

Yeah it's too bad they are not wide screen, but if you set your monitor to just display the image in 4:3 (rather than stretched), it isn't that bad.

[Cowzrul]

Originally Posted by Nagorak

I haven't played MW4 Mercs. I'll get to that once I get through the MW3 expansion and MW4.

I think one problem with the combat in MW3 is that while it was good, and accurate, you couldn't really fight through a whole star of enemy mechs at once without losing all of your lance mates, as well as being in danger of going down yourself. Because you had to worry about salvaging enough mechs to keep your lance mates piloting something, it made it so if they went down it was a huge setback.

In MW2 you were superior enough to your enemies in terms of skill that you could mow through a ton of enemy mechs (plus a lot of mechs were equipped with weapons that were just useless, like pretty much every AC, due to the flawed mechanics of MW2). With ACs working and PPCs actually being effective (not just slow moving fire balls), the weapons are just a lot more devastating and you can go down pretty quickly.

I liked that MW3 was more of a challenge than MW2 though.

I've only played the MW4 games/expansions, and I can say that with proper skill you should be able to mow down enemies without a problem. The game gets really tough on the higher difficulty settings though. And your lancemates are pretty much retarded. They seem oblivious to the fact that destroying an enemy mech makes a big explosion, so they merrily run up next to enemies you're trying to kill, and finish off ones that wander close to you, etc. I dunno how many times my lancemates have forced me to start a mission over via indirect friendly fire.

[Nagorak]

Originally Posted by Cowzrul

I've only played the MW4 games/expansions, and I can say that with proper skill you should be able to mow down enemies without a problem. The game gets really tough on the higher difficulty settings though. And your lancemates are pretty much retarded. They seem oblivious to the fact that destroying an enemy mech makes a big explosion, so they merrily run up next to enemies you're trying to kill, and finish off ones that wander close to you, etc. I dunno how many times my lancemates have forced me to start a mission over via indirect friendly fire.

They are pretty stupid in MW3 too. They can actually be pretty bad about even direct friendly fire if a friendly unit happens to be blocking their shot on an enemy. I remember once one of my lance mates let loose with a volley of like 30 missiles right into the back of one of the other friendly mechs and blew him straight up. Mech explosions don't seem very big in MW3 so that was not as much of a problem.

I did play the original MW4 before, and I do recall you having much longer staying power than in MW3 (granted I was playing MW3 on hard, maybe on normal it's different).

[Ristogod]

From a tactical stand point, MW3 has been my favorite so far.

[pahncrd]

I loved MW3 and played it through at least five or six times.

I hope that MW5 leans more towards the simmy feel of MW3 but works in the major improvements from MW4 along with a number of new ones.

[Nagorak]

I hope MW5 is closer to MW3 as well. I thought the combat was the best of all the MWs I've played (MW2 all, MW3 and MW4). It felt the most authentic in comparison to the BT table top game and the BT novels. I just think the overall storyline and some of the missions could have been better. Like, if you combined the storyline of MW2 or MW2 Mercs with the sim from MW3 you'd have an amazing game.

The clunky inventory management just sort of got in the way, and toward the end I thought the storyline sort of petered out. You spent too much time just trying to escape the planet, with one false lead after another.

[Encyclopedia_b]

any of you old schol mw3 piolots ever play on mszone?

if so do you remember your clans and/or piolot names?

i was in:

MOC
SV
(some others that i cant remember currently)

my names were:
rubberducky
freaknastyxphd
bismallah