Multiplayer Review

by Dave "Marauder" Kratky. Dec 6/2000.

 

A fresh look at Mechwarrior 4.

Allright. I screwed up, but I'm gamer enough to admit it. I reviewed Mechwarrior 4 after only playing mutiplayer briefly. That was a mistake I won't make again. The differences between the single & mutiplayer are night and day.

First off, the browser interface for finding games is dead simple. Regretably they're still hosted through the Gaming Zone, a service I've never liked. To join a game you just click mutliplayer, enter your info, where you want to play and connect. Find a game you like the look of and double click on it, you're in. Very nice. Generally in Microsoft games you need to use your web browser to connect to the Zone servers, which then launch the game. If you get disconnected or want to join another room you have to completely exit the game and go back to the browser in the Zone. Gets irritating quite quickly. Not so in Mechwarrior 4.

The mutiplayer join screen

 

Oh, hey! They've added games! One of the major things I bitched about with Mechwarrior 3 was that there were no multiplayer games other than Deathmatch. Some of the games are very, very cool as well.

Team Attrition: Get points for the amount of damage you and your team deal out. The more damage (You don't even have to get a kill, just label guys really good!) you do, the more points you get. You do get points for each kill, as well as different points depeding on the type of damage you do. Much fun ensues here.

Attrition: Same as above, but it's every mechwarrior for themself.

Team Destruction: Points are awarded for each kill. Damage done without killing does not count.

Destruction: Same as above, but it's every mechwarrior for themself.

Team King of the Hill: An area in the middle of the map is marked off. Get in here and you get 1 point per second, or 5 points per second if there are no enemy 'mechs in the area with you.

King of the Hill: Same as above, but it's every mechwarrior for themself.

Capture the Flag: We all know this one. Get into the enemy base, get the flag, bring it back to your base. Try not to get killed along the way. Shutting down, ejecting or being destroyed ejects the flag. Flag returns if no-one picks it up in 30 seconds.

Steal the Beacon: Kinda like rabbit for Tribes. Grab the flag in the middle of the map and run like hell. You get 1 point per second you hold onto the flag. Shutting down, ejecting or being destroyed ejects the flag. Flag returns if no-one picks it up in 30 seconds.

Escort - Just like VIP for Counter-Strike & TFC. Two teams, each team has a VIP in a light mech. Get your VIP to the rescue point alive, get points.

One thing I wish they would have added is defend and destroy. Each team has a base, get in a kill it dead.

Because you can now play 16 players as well, you can actually get tactical. Battles with Mechwarrior 2 & 3 were just slug fests with assult 'mechs. With MW4 you actually see guys scouting for their lances, ambushes. All sorts of cool stuff.

Still trying to figure out if I can run a dedicated server without having the MW4 GUI up on my machine, and moderate it remotely. If I can, woohoo!

One of the coolest things about this game is the new stats reporting system. Anyone can check out the total overall stats for all the servers running that are currently running with reporting enabled. Take a look.

The final analysis