I seem to be stuck in a rut recently, managing to select several games to feed bomb to that have no screenshot function. One of those games was Mechcommander 2, which ate the bomb this afternoon after several sleepless nights and more than a few skipped work hours.

The quickest synopsis of this game is that it’s the kind of game that results from developers rushing a sequel out on the heels of a hit. Although I enjoyed the game and it more than satisfied my need for giant robot combat, there were a lot of good elements to the original that developer Microsoft seemed to have lost in the sequel. Honestly, it felt more like a long expansion pack than a discrete game. Read the extended entry. It goes on for a while - it turns out I’m really opinionated about my games.

So here’s the background of the series: Mechcommander 1 is a tactical RTS game that focuses solely on “small unit” tactics (if you count 4 x 80 tons of giant robot as small). It runs on a 3rd person perspective, single angle view of pre-rendered graphics. Resource management is kept to a minimum; once you’ve decked out your team in the pre-mission screen, resources only influence how much external support you can summon (support like airstrikes, sensor probes, and minelayers).

The big change for the franchise is the addition of a fully free-form 3-d viewpoint much like the one found in Myth 2: Soulblighter (a favorite of the EMB editors). While the effort has done much to bring the franchise into the new era of 3-d rendering, it comes off as flat and sharply polygonal. The landscapes look like they were put together with a trowel and in the end I found myself feeling wistful for the cartoonish pre-rendered graphics of the original.

An even worse sin is committed in the game play modifications. While the command interface and resources work much the same as before, the controls were non-intuitive and a number of them were never used. The “Conserve Ammo” command and Ammo Truck support - so prevalent in the first - were present but as far as I can tell, totally worthless as you can’t run out of ammo. The artillery pieces had next to no range, the airstrikes never hurt anything much, and I never found a good oppourtunity to summon a Minelayer. And let me tell you, there’s nothing more enjoyable than watching your foes stumble through a mine field to get to you. The only really useful support command was the one new support option, “Salvage Craft”. This handy plane flies in and drops one of your pilots into the blasted hulk of your slain enemies - if it’s sufficiently intact you can repair it and use it in the very same mission, allowing you to circumvent the tonnage limits enforced pre-mission.

Unfortunately, the rules of salvage and economics left something to be desired. On a number of occasions I found that a wrecked 80 ton Zeus was unavailable for salvage until I jumpstarted that 15 ton Fireant first. (I’ve taken dumps bigger than 15 tons.) There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to these odd salvage laws, they just happened. The prevalence of advanced Clan technology was another odd change from the first; in the first edition if you wanted to juice your mechs with Clan pulse lasers, you’d have to go out and whack some Clanners and hope you could salvage them. In this game, entire Clan mechs were available for purchase, making them about a difficult to get as a raspberry squishy at the Quicki-Mart.

I also didn’t like that the mechs didn’t have cupholders or naked lady mudflaps.

If you liked the first installment of Mechcommander you’ll probably enjoy this game as a harmless past time in idle moments, but if you’ve got other games to feed the bomb to, by all means, let this one gather dust.