There was a time when the games you played on PC were a completely different animal than was you saw on consoles. Whereas the SNES and Genesis represented a "golden age" for console gaming, the PC had it's own little utupio going on. But it was with games that simply couldn't/wouldn't be done on consoles. Whether it was point and click adventures (Sierra & LucasArt's many offerings, like Day of the Tentacle & the King's quest series), complex CRPGs like Fallout & Daggerfall, or a good, solid first person shooter like Quake or Duke Nukem. But there's one series that drove me. The one that forced me to budget my money so I could afford a RAM upgrade. That series? MechWarrior.

Battletech was the only pen and paper RPG I was ever able to get into, so it makes perfect sens that the MechWarrior games would be right up my alley. But I got to admit, it was an acquired taste. When I first opened the manual for MechWarrior 2 and saw the keyboard layout chart, I was shocked. Nearly EVERY key on the 102 key keyboard was used. How in the hell was I going to manage that?

I started my campaign as Clan Wolf, and remember being impressed with the (bad by today's standards) CGI intro, in which a pair of Timberwolfs (Madcat's for you Inner Sphere types) were ambushed by a Summoner (Thor) and blown up. I took on my first mission with a pretty standard Nova config, and barely passed the mission, which consisted of blowing up a couple mechs, inspecting a few targets, and getting back to the drop ship. I was honestly overwhelmed by the depth of the game, and the customization aspects of the Mechs. Granted, this was all stuff that was in the tabletop game. But I never expected it to translate to the PC so smoothly.

So I started playing around with the MechLab, and learned the ins and outs of the Mechs. Now, in the original DOS release, there was a free add-on download you could get from Activision's BBS called Netmech, which let you play the game over a LAN or through a dial-up modem. And I had a couple buddies I played over dial-up with, because at this point, the Internet was still in it's commercial infancy, and playing video games over it was a very shaky prospect, especially over dial-up. And it was fun, but I wouldn't really appreciate the full scope of how great MechWarrior's multiplayer could be for a few years.

MechWarrior 2: Titanium Trilogy came out. It featured MW2 and it's two expansion packs, with 3D accelerated graphics and they were Windows compatible. With Internet play... nice. But then MechWarrior 3 came out, which was even better. So, between MW2, two expansion packs, and now MW3 - plus the fact that I just got broadband, I was in heaven.

I found my true calling with MW3. I had a group of around a dozen guys I played reguarly with, and while I was never the top in terms of kills - though I held my own - I excelled at building Mech configs. My configs could make an average player good, and a good player great. I was able to get to most out of my mechs in terms of heat effeciency, weapon to weight ration, speed, armor. I took the time to the strengths and weaknesses of every Mech model in the game and every map, and if you gave me a few days, I'd have a mech that could dominate any map.

Then there was MechWarrior 4. I admit, there was a LOT I loved about MW3 that didn't transition to MW4 since it was done by MS's studios. But I DID love the hardpoint system. I had always tried to keep my configs close to what the mech was built to be - nothing annoyed me more than seeing, say, a Gauss rifle firing out of a Mad Cat's shoulder missile launchers. This element forced everyone to play fair, and it made my role as the config builder even more valuable. At this point, I had a regular clan with 10 guys in it, and we all had a prefered Mech or two. I loved the Thor and MKII, because I had practed the Death From Above manuever religiously for 5 years, and finally had mastered it.

What really made the game fun though was when you had a regular opponent, though. We had a rival clan that we matched up against at least 3 nights a week. Eventually, they'd start finding holes in my configs, weaknesses they could exploit, and I'd go back to the drawing board to cover them up. They'd had my group at a disadvantage for a bit, until we started spotting THEIR weak points, and they'd have to figure out how to fix them. It was basically a back and forth arms race, and it's the most fun I've had playing ANY game online.

So now there's a new MechWarrior game coming out. I sincerely hope it maintains the same level of depth and strategy of it's name sake. If they're going to go with a shallow, arcade-ish, pick up and play gameplay style, I'd rather they just keep the MechAssault name.

MechWARRIOR is a more strategy than shoot em up.