Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries Review

Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries, developed and published by Piranha Games, is all about giant mech warfare. Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance released almost 2 decades ago and while the overarching BattleTech universe has still been going strong, fans have been chomping at the bit to get a proper Mechwarrior title to play again. Does Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries live up to its expectations?

In Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries players will take on the role of Commander Mason. After a brief introductory sequence which gets you up to speed with the game’s controls, Mason is thrust into the proverbial deep end. The story of Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is, however, not something to write home about. There are times when there’s a severe disconnect with what’s going on in the game world and what’s supposedly happening back at your base of operations. This is compounded by the fact that upon returning from missions, your mechs need repairs. These repairs aren’t completed immediately either. They take days or weeks to complete and when a mission stresses the utmost urgency of action, it just feels off that you’re sitting around wasting time waiting for mech repairs.

The mission structure of Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries does feature a bit of a formulaic repetition to it. Players will complete missions for their mercenary outfit, rack up a lot of credits or supplies and use the rewards to fund new mechs or outfit and repair old ones. Depending on whether or not the faction hiring you likes you, you’ll be able to negotiate your rewards a bit better before heading out into missions.

Thankfully, the gameplay of Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is the real star of the show. Controlling your hulking mechanical marvel feels great. There’s massive attention to detail that has been put into the game with mechs looking great in both the first and third-person views. You will feel as if you’re piloting a giant mech and therein lies a metric tonne of enjoyment. Walking around with a mech feels exactly like how it should feel. Rocks and other destructible objects in the game world will get crushed underfoot if you move over them. The hulking mass that you control feels heavy and reacts accordingly when moving around. Smaller more agile mechs are of course, faster. Your mech’s torso can also move independently from its legs and while this does take some getting used to at first, the game’s tutorial does a good job explaining the controls to you. Within no time you’ll be piloting a mech and blowing up enemy forces with ease.

Blowing up enemy mechs involves using a multitude of weapons that are assigned to weapon groups on your own mech. You can choose to fire each weapon module individually or together depending on your control scheme. Mechs can be outfitted with anything from missile launchers, machine guns, lasers and more but unfortunately, the option to melee other mechs seems to have been left out completely. Mech warfare does have one major caveat in the form of overheating. Fire your weapons too many times within a short space of time and your mech will most likely enter the temperature danger zone. Continue to ignore the heat warnings and your systems will completely overheat and shut down. It is amazing! This often adds a layer of complexity to approaching battles since you may want to hang back and use long-range weapons to stay out of harm’s way.

Graphically, Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries looks spectacular. The mechs are incredibly detailed and players will be able to customize them quite extensively. There are plenty of paint jobs to choose from and you can change the colours of your mech with ease. Environments are detailed too with the various worlds you visit all having a gorgeous aesthetic.

The soundtrack used in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is filled with adrenaline-pumping tracks that fit right in with the mechanical mayhem you unleash upon your enemies. The voice acting however falls a bit flat and some of the dialogue does get pretty cliché throughout the game.

Overall, Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries does just enough to satiate fans. The story might be cliché and there are some minor grievances to be had with how smooth the game runs when combat gets heated but generally, the addictive nature of blowing up mechs, returning to your base, refitting and heading out again for more destruction is something that just can’t be beat. The game is incredibly fun and we can see ourselves and many others playing this for hours and hours on end.

Published and Developed by Piranha Games

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries was reviewed on PC

You can grab the game on the Epic Games Store here  – https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/mechwarrior-5/home

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