MechWarrior Online really stands out as a free-to-play game because of how good it looks. It was built using CryEngine3, it is evident how much the team loves the series by the care and effort they took into painstakingly recreating the look of every mech from the Battletech universe. Fans of the series will immediately recognize mechs like the Titan. They also look amazing as they splash through rivers or smash mountains.
The phrase, what you see is what you get really applies to the game. Fans of the series have come to expect that every mech is extremely customizable, with adaptable weapon loadouts and accessories that fit into your particular play style. If the battle is agains a Hunchback with an autocannon coming off its shoulder, it is immediately recognizable just by looking at it. That comes in handy because of the ability to target specific parts of that mech in order to disable troublesome limbs with all of its armaments.
This means that placing weapons and accessories on specific parts of the mech can make a difference since arms can aim and fire independently from the rest of the mech. In previous games the mechs entire upper body pivoted, meaning everything was fired in the same place. In MechWarrior Online, however, the torso weapons can be aimed at one target while each arm can be aimed at separate targets, or a specific joint on the same target.
The goal is to kill the other team (called a mercenary group), your role can be as straight forward as heavy weapons expert, the spotter or the fast-moving scout. The challenge that Piranha Games faces is to reward everyone for doing more than just kills, something upon which the team has been working on. At the end of each round, the goal is to make someone who spotted by monitoring radar and thermal imaging screens to feel like they contributed just as much as the heaviest mech.
The environment potentially affects how a player plays the game just as much as their individual load out. The MechWarrior universe takes place on hundreds of different worlds, meaning battles won’t always happen in beautiful mountains. Desert fighting means less cover for the mechs, however, heat of the environment makes the use of thermal imaging less effective. The exact opposite applies in ice worlds; weapons overheat slower, but the mechs will stand out a lot easier to someone watching their scanners. Water can be a mechs friend, as long as the heatsinks are strategically placed on the legs, which can make a difference if the fighting takes place on a world with shallow bodies of water.
MechWarriors online enters closed beta testing in the near future with an open bets to launch before the end of the year. Pirahna Games emphasizes the fact that no one will be able to pay their way into power. The microtransaction system will focus on giving players with less time on their hands, but a little extra money in their pockets additional gameplay options.