Game Moment #16 - Mechwarrior II

DEATH FROM ABOVE!

That was an somewhat obscure rule from the the tabletop version of the game "BattleTech." I'd only played it a couple of times. I was familiar with the rules, but the guys who played the game invested small fortunes into miniatures of giant robots. (Yes, that sounds like an oxymoron.) It seemed like an expensive hobby. Maybe not in comparison to, say, computer gaming... but I still didn't feel a strong desire to invest in the game beyond the basic rules system. Oh, and the adaptation of the wargame rules into an RPG, called "Mechwarrior."

BattleTech was a game inspired by anime, where warriors of the future drove gigantic, walking, metal war machines. The very concept defies all logic - why pilot a bipedal war machine when a tank would be far more efficient? No reason at all. Except a three-story-tall bipedal robot feels more like an extension of self, rather than piloting a vehicle. It's the supersoldier fantasy taken to excess - a lone warrior who can be an obscenely well-armed and armored walking GIANT on the battlefield.

The rule mentioned above was an attack by mechs with "jump jets," in which they could leap and come down directly on an enemy mech's "head" (which always housed the cockpit and vulnerable pilot, for some reason). It was a difficult and dangerous maneuver, with a less-than-stellar chance of success, but well worth it if you got lucky.

Early Mechwarrior Simulators
The wargame wasn't enough for me. I wanted to actually pilot one of those giant mecha (or "Mechs" in the Battletech universe). Or the closest thing to it. Around 1990 or so, I got my chance, with a delightful little game called "Mechwarrior," a title by Dynamix, published by Activision. This game was a little old when I played it, restricted to 16 colors at 320 x 200 resolution. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I played it into the ground.

An even better opportunity presented itself when I went to Walnut Creek, California, with my wife to visit her relatives. We paid a visit to the "Battletech Center" there, which had been redubbed "Virtual World" centers. For seven bucks, you'd be treated to an orientation movie (included here), then duke it out with seven other players in big "pods" - cockpits housed around a proprietary networked computer game. You'd also be given a printout of how you did, with your final score and ranking compared to the other players. The controls for the mechs at the BattleTech centers were impossibly complicated, but there were hardcore geeks who lived and breathed it. My first time visiting there, I met an experienced player in the cafe area. He was in-between sessions, and gave me some pointers before my first battle.

And for some good laughs, here's the orientation video, courtesy of YouTube:



Mechwarrior II
Fortunately for my starving-student bank account, the Virtual World centers were not local. The next best thing was the long-awaited (and long-delayed) sequel to Mechwarrior, produced by Activision. The final result was a classic. I played through the two campaigns (plus the expansion, Ghost Bear's Legacy), perhaps four times each. I thought I was pretty good.

The manual for the computer game mentioned the "Death From Above" attack from the old wargame. While it was theoretically supposed to be possible, I couldn't ever get it to work.

Mechwarrior II eventually supported LAN play. Very few games natively supported Internet play at the time, but with a program called Kali you could turn convince your computer that the Internet was your own private LAN, and play any network games with other Kali users. After wasting a couple of friends in actual LAN-based play (strangely, they didn't want to play with me after that), I tried my hand against an experienced player online.

Getting My Butt Kicked
I used my favorite Mech loadout from the single-player game. I'd honed the design to perfection. Twin Particle Projector Cannons (PPCs), plenty of heat sinks to handle the spike of firing two PPCs at once, plus an array of medium-range lasers. I had a small number of missiles, but I was so accurate with my other weapons I hated to use anything with limited ammunition.

So I faced my opponent, hoping I could handle him as I handled the AI. The instant he came within range, I fired my PPCs at him, and began backing up, trying to maintain my long-range advantage.

He stopped. I watched my slow PPC shots (which, I discovered later, were referred to by the online MW2 community as "Blue Pillows of Death") approach my foe. At the last second, he hit his jump-jets and easily dodged out of the way. He came closer. I fired at him a couple more times, and each time he expertly dodged.

I thought I was lucky when he shot out my mech's leg. I didn't realize he was deliberately trying to incapacitate me without killing me. After that, he just sat there for a little while, at long range. I kept firing my "death pillows at him," and he kept dodging. It dawned on me that he'd been toying with me this whole time. After exchanging some chat messages with him, he put me out of my misery.

You see, the guys who played Mechwarrior II online got hourly practice dodging guided missiles. Being fired upon with the slowest-moving, unguided projectiles in the game was almost an insult, and the use of PPCs was a clear mark of a newbie.

I was hooked.

Death From Above
I didn't stay a newbie for long. After a while, I became pretty good at the game. I was leading my targets almost precisely based on their ping. I was firing guided missiles AROUND obstacles, hitting targets on the other side that didn't have line-of-sight with me. I'd learned to master jump jets, and I was routinely dodging guided missiles myself. I had optimized mech designs for every weight category, taking advantage of not only things like heat and damage distribution but lag-tolerance in the online environment, collision detection limitations, and variations of different rules for online play (friendly versus tournament-rules adopted by the online community).

My online guild put me a leadership position, as I was active, supportive of new players, and while nowhere near "the best," I was probably in the top 25%. I went back and played the single-player game, at one point, and was amazed by how incredibly trivial it was. I'd take on overwhelming odds just to keep it interesting.

Then, one day, I was leading a team in a "friendly" (non-scoring") match against another online guild. I was holding my own with the team, and it was eventually down to just myself and one opponent. I had smashed his Mech up pretty bad, and he was "hiding" on top of a mesa above me. I'd expended my missile load taking "indirect fire" shots at his mech. I wasn't about to expose myself to attack trying to get up to his level, so I was hanging out below the mesa waiting for him to expose himself so I could get some shots in at him with my alsers. He didn't seem too willing to come down to my level, either.

So we stayed in a stalemate position for a couple of minutes, when finally he jumped. I took some free shots on him as he fell. The battle was almost won.

Then my mech exploded. The cockpit was shattered. He'd come down... directly on top of my mech. I stared at the little "death cam" mode in disbelief.

Death From Above!

What do you know, it really COULD be done! I'd just been on the receiving end of a "Death From Above" attack.


(Vaguely) related expressions of n00bieness...
* Why Cooperative Multiplayer Is Best
* Guest Game Moment #1: Falcon 4.0
* Game Moment #12: Rainbow Six

Labels: Game Moments, Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink)