MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries - PC Gamer Review

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries has been reviewed positively by PC Gamer.

Your mech strides onto the battlefield--sometimes to a calm forest morning, others into raging streams of laser fire. The missions are chosen from only a few types, but they're always different because each battlefield is procedurally generated and then sprinkled with objectives. Navigating cramped canyons on a Mars-like world is a very different feel from being utterly exposed on a rolling plain of wheat. There are also bespoke campaign missions of varying quality, from clumsy and linear to interestingly open-ended.

The mechs are a pleasure to handle, and the core experience of combat really takes advantage of the map as a centerpiece. Mechs stomp around, faster or slower as you throttle up and down--throttle and orientation control are a key part of the simulator-style play here. Twisting your torso to strafe targets and show strong armor to the enemy is key, as is knowing the layout of weapons on your mech--lasers situated high might shoot over a wall, while those slung on low arms will just explode the cover you were using.

[…]

Thanks henriquejr!



More information.

Well… other reviews are less positive. Anyway i won't consider this game for at least a year….

Well it seems some reviews are mentioning lenght (too long), complexity and high difficulty as negatives. So perhaps this game is actually good, just not for pipsqueaks?

Played for a few hours and it takes a while to get used to the controls. One other problem is you can tell it still needs more optimizing with the upcoming patches.

Oh, I remember playing MW4 back then with a HOTAS. Felt good.
I hope the new one will also be nicely playable with one - planned to get a new one for other games anyway.

I like what I have seen in Let's play vids. The merc concept is the best Mechwarrior thingy anyway. Still waiting my year until it is patched and hits Steam.

I'm with many others, not even considering taking a glance at this until it is available via Steam or great old games, and after a few more hundred updates have landed.

From what I have seen in the videos this is gonna be fantastic!!

Not waiting a year. Nope. Installing now.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
Well it seems some reviews are mentioning lenght (too long), complexity and high difficulty as negatives. So perhaps this game is actually good, just not for pipsqueaks?

They were complaining that it's too long? That's a first.

I was going to get this, but now I'm going to wait for some more impressions first. The thing that puts me off is the battlefields being procedurally generated. This is the first I'd heard about that, and it comes as a surprise and not in a good way.

Originally Posted by JDR13
The thing that puts me off is the battlefields being procedurally generated. This is the first I'd heard about that, and it comes as a surprise and not in a good way.

How so?
The vast majority of levels in past MW games were so bland and boring even mediocre procedurally generated cities/villages/whatever would likely be ahead of that.
It was always just a bunch of random seeming buildings on an empty landscape. For cover and to reduce them to rubble.

This really isn't the kind of game that would require a carefully crafted Dishonored-like approach to level design.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
Well it seems some reviews are mentioning length (too long), complexity and high difficulty as negatives. So perhaps this game is actually good, just not for pipsqueaks?

I'm only 15 or so hours in, but I feel like they're not rushing past the light mechs. The 50T you start with is still my heaviest mech. I have been mostly taking the nearest mission and not traveling far where it might be more difficult but it seems easy enough.

I'd say the complexity is lower than usual. MW2 let you customise your mechs a lot more. I have vague memories of loading enough weapons onto a mech to instantly explode when firing. That sort of user error is not possible in MW5, which is all about the variants with their set weapon mounts. Small Energy, Large Missile, etc. You can still put ammo and heatsinks anywhere, though. But along with the variants you also see Rare mechs, which I think are just mechs that are in perfect condition, and also Heroic mechs which are quite overpowered. For example, I can't remember using a Cicada by choice in any Mechwarrior but the heroic variant I picked up is fantastic with double heatsinks, as much armor as a mech 10T heavier and can still run extremely fast. I'd never have used the Cicada, otherwise. Same thing happened with the Firestarter where the heroic variant comes with 4 flamers, 4 machine guns and just cannot seem to generate any heat at all. I just use it for burning down buildings and shooting tanks. I feel like to Mechwarrior fans the heroics will be very entertaining because they're pretty much cheating the weight limits.

Originally Posted by JDR13
They were complaining that it's too long? That's a first.

I was going to get this, but now I'm going to wait for some more impressions first. The thing that puts me off is the battlefields being procedurally generated. This is the first I'd heard about that, and it comes as a surprise and not in a good way.

In the end, it's just Unreal Engine. I wonder if Rockstar could have made GTAV in UE? I'd like to see some city size cities or something to really give you the feeling of scale, but I think looking at your mechs while in the dropship is the closest you get. It sort of looks like you're actually just normal FPS size and the buildings are just small. But it seems to be pushing the limits of the engine already. I don't see what more they could do. There's too much landscape clutter and if you lower the settings rocks popping in looks awful. Also, there's some efficient, I assume, shading going on that looks pretty bad without lots of antialiasing. It is a game you need to run in high settings because low looks awful, but maximum doesn't quite have the performance.

But, yeah… The generation of the maps isn't too bad. There's enough elevation to make walls and force you to find a way into the base, etc. It's not just totally flat. You do always seem to get out of the dropship facing away from your nav points.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Played for a few hours and it takes a while to get used to the controls. One other problem is you can tell it still needs more optimizing with the upcoming patches.

Did you get the new drivers?
"The new Game Ready Driver provides the latest performance optimizations, profiles, and bug fixes for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries."

Originally Posted by SirJames
Did you get the new drivers?
"The new Game Ready Driver provides the latest performance optimizations, profiles, and bug fixes for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries."

Latest AMD driver and I still have optimization problems.

Mostly some graphic and texture problems like blurred images and jagged lines. You can check out it's reddit thread as Epic has no forums to discus this problem like Steam.

The official website also only has an e-mail for support.

New patch is out and it's almost 8+ GB. Fixes my graphic problem with the tutorial.

Link - https://mw5mercs.com/news/2019/12/17-mw5-mercs-hot-fix

We have another hot-fix inbound today! Here is a brief overview of the incoming update:

• Fix for a crash that occurs when stripping a mech that has chain-fire enabled on weapon group 1
• Fix for a "Fatal Error!" error that could randomly occur during gameplay or when travelling into and out of missions
• Texture optimizations were added for the tutorial
• Fixed an issue where people with more than 128 friends on their friends list might not be able to send invites.
• Made a change to prevent save file corruption.
• Made a change to recover from save file corruption.
• Online friends playing MW5 will be sorted at the top of the in-game friends list
• Fix for Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick axis not properly assigned

Before this patch I had grainy cell shaded textures.

Positives:
- Great, fun combat simulation
- I mean… it's Mechwarrior afterall
- Destroy everything, walk through buildings
- Loot and pillage to improve your mechs

Neutral:
- The ability to walk through your ship / mech-bay is a nice idea, but completely pointless.
- Can't judge the campaign yet.

Negatives:
- Lance AI (they have a death wish). I guess the same is true for enemies, who in some scenarios can even be sniped by exploiting out-of-range hits with your AC.
- Some enemy reinforcements seem to spawn… out of thin air? Come on, at least spawn them outside my viewing range. Or consistently stick to using drop ships for close spawns.
- I would have liked to be able to configure things more freely. Both mechs (fixed weapon slots reduce the number of configurations you can try) and pilots (who level up based on skills used only, automatically).

Originally Posted by Cacheperl
- Some enemy reinforcements seem to spawn… out of thin air? Come on, at least spawn them outside my viewing range. Or consistently stick to using drop ships for close spawns.

From the current patch notes, see here: https://mw5mercs.com/news/2019/12/19-mw5-mercs-patch

• Enemy spawning has been improved.
• DropShip spawning has been improved.

Sounds promising.

Old thread but only one about the game.

Anyhow the game received some new DLC this week after being released on Steam.

Cool, installed this on my series x just because it was just added to gamepass….going to give it a whirl.