One of the major traits of the Battletech IP is gearing up and ordering BattleMechs into war, either on pen & paper or on the computer (or TV) screen. The MechWarrior series has already captured the essence of piloting one of these war robots quite well, so MechCommander is a fresh attempt at portraying the other major part of the BattleTech IP.
As its title suggests, the game places the player in command of a handful of Mechs, but without being in the cockpit of one. Like RTS games of the time and as befitting the backstory of headquartered command officers in the Battletech sagas, any intel that the commander has is provided by these Mechs and their pilots, along with that by auxiliary vehicles. However, there are no in-mission replacements of any Mechs, much less their pilots; pilots that are killed in battle remain dead for good, while injured ones sit out the next mission.
Limiting the hardware that a player can bring into a battle is a tonnage limit supposedly imposed by the capacity of the vehicle that deploys Mechs into battle. This limitation has plenty of gameplay balance already, but the game throws in another limit in the form of a restriction on the number of mechs. Figuring out the best combination of Mechs to take full advantage of the tonnage and Mech limits can be a huge pain. There appears to be some reward of sorts for deploying below the tonnage limit, but it is too small for the extra risk due to not bringing that bit more firepower into battle.
Mechs also have to be placed into strict squad-based deployments as well, which serve little more purpose than to mass them together for group selection. Mechs in the same squad don't move in tandem with each other when ordered to move as a group as well, further adding to the sense of uselessness of this feature. Squad deployments cannot be changed in-mission, so if the player is stuck with only one Mech in each squad, he/she has to handle all of them individually. This is certainly not a flexible game design.
Speaking of Mechs, as is deserving of the Battletech IP, the game has a gamut of Mechs, ranging from the Commando (a really fast & irritating light BattleMech iconic of the Battletech IP) and the peculiarly heavily armed Cougar (a light OmniMech) to the hulking Masakari (also known as the Warhawk) and the equally intimidating (but heavier) Atlas. However, the developers have taken liberties with some Mech designs, especially the Atlas, which certainly looks more like a giant muscle-man made of metal instead of the classic (but perhaps clunkier) look that the Atlas has. This is just a small gripe though, as all Mech designs in this game serve their main purpose of giving them an immediately identifiable silhouette.
Each of these Mechs has a payload limit that determines the amount of weapons (in total weight) that they can be mounted with. Some Mechs have variants that can mount more weapons, have more armor in lieu of some payload or have jump-jets (in return for a reduction in payload, of course). Any Mechs, regardless of its canonized design can be mounted with any weapon. Therefore, any light Mech can be sporting a Gauss Rifle, where canon-wise only a few light Mechs are designed to be capable of absorbing the huge recoil from this weapon. This is, again, not a big gripe, but it would definitely appear jarring to faithful fans of BattleTech (who may notice the missing heat management system).
However, a more well-grounded complain concerns the mounting of said weaponry (and miscellaneous equipment like sensors). It is not clear which weapon goes to which limb or other parts of the Mech. Therefore, this gives rise to situations where having a leg that is apparently not mounted with any weapons blown off a Mech may result in random weapons being destroyed, or the worse occurrence of having a Mech rendered nearly defenseless no thanks to a wrecked arm. The problem is even more acute if Mechs are armed with weaponry that their canonized designs are not supposed to have.
If the player would prefer not to endanger precious Mechs (and even more precious pilots, who gain experience and skill from mission to mission), the player is given access to some calls for artillery strikes to smash static enemies with (or obliterate enemy Mechs with a well-timed call), recon cameras for extra visual intel and probes to scan the map for enemies that do not have ECM suites. For the most part, these provide just supplementary tactics, though some scenarios in certain mission can be tough to survive without resorting to them (and the player often has to realize this the hard way). Of more worth are facilities in the battlefield, such as repair bays and turret control towers that can be captured to turn turrets to the player's side.
The AI can be particularly vicious, and quite irrationally so. The AI can be lured onto minefields, well-placed ambushes and artillery strikes along any chokepoints. However, enemy units cannot be lured away piecemeal, and often attack as a cascade of angry hostiles that will eventually overwhelm the player's forces if they are not dealt with quickly and efficiently. While it does provide some challenge, the AI sometimes come across as predictable and more artificial than it already is - a sense compounded further by the fact that the player can never be able to hide from the AI, even once his/her Mechs have gone far outside their sensor ranges.
Furthermore, the lack of an in-mission game-saving feature results in some rather frustrating attempts to accomplish missions that happen to have many hairy triggers. This is a serious setback to this game, as reloading missions can take a while and playing back to the point where failure previously occurred can detract from the otherwise great experience quite a lot.
The story can be quite too much for people with little knowledge of the Battletech saga. For such persons, the story would amount to little more than an invasion on the homeworld of a faction of cold-blooded warriors blamed for numerous atrocities. The more learned would be able to identify this particular period of history in the Battletech saga quickly, but they would be at a loss when attempting to explain matters to the uninitiated.
In an attempt at portraying the Inner Sphere forces' stretched resources that is put into use against the Smoke Jaguars' homeground advantage, the story is used to tie into the resource used in the game (which is categorized under the Strategy category after all), which is known simply as Resource Points. RPs are obtained by completing missions, achieving side objectives during missions and capturing storage depots. They are then used to purchase Mechs and equipment of the Inner Sphere sort (but not, and never, Clan hardware). Unfortunately, RPs are rendered quite useless later in the campaign, in part to a game design oversight that will be explained momentarily.
The Battletech backstory mentions that the Clans (of which the antagonist faction in the campaign belongs to) have superior technology. In keeping true to this canon, the developers may have taken the design of Clan Mechs too far; most, if not all, of them are superior to Inner Sphere Mechs of the same category and tonnage; they tend to be faster, have larger payloads and have more armor. The same game design policy applies to Clan weaponry, which are all superior and lighter than their Inner Sphere counterparts. There are apparent game imbalances here, as most players would end up figuring out that non-Clan hardware just won't cut it. Worse still, Clan weaponry can only be looted off storage bunkers and fallen Clan Mechs in the campaign. Coupled with the lack of a save-game feature as mentioned earlier, this game design results in major frustration when the player attempts to obtain Clan stuff.
Graphics-wise, the game gives deserved respect to the varied Mech designs (mostly), and more with rather impressive animations (especially the bigger Mechs). The battlefield, however, can be quite bland at times: plains broken up by protruding hills too steep for Mechs to climb, odd bodies of water and the occasional town or village. The map designs are certainly not lackadaisical; they are just not as impressive as the Mechs (especially as the latter trudge around them). Having otherwise boring-looking forests burn when the player torches them is quite fascinating to watch though.
Sound effects, if those in the Mechwarrior games can be used as a benchmark, are satisfactorily spot-on. Laser-fire, the whoosh of missiles and the barking of autocannons are a treat to listen, especially if they hit the intended target and cause serious damage, like popping of limbs, the never-tiresome sight of crumpling Mechs and the glorious (& deadly) explosion of Mechs.
Music, however, sounds a bit mediocre compared to sound effects. There are lackluster orchestra, some odd flute noises intended to emulate melodious winds and some attempts at creating suspenseful music for battles occurring on-screen. It's not bad, but rather underwhelming if compared to the rest of the sound designs.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the game's sound designs is that every pilot has his/her own voice-over - and there are quite a lot of pilots to crew Mechs with. Of course, there are some lousy voice-overs and quite a lot of repetition, but all of them achieve the fundamental objective of clearly informing the player of the situations that the pilots are caught in.
Much like other games of this time, this reviewer's multiplayer experience is limited to LAN games, no thanks to the rather nascent and hiccup-ridden Internet infrastructure of the region of the world that this reviewer lives in. While the familiar glee of smashing enemies with giant robots in the single player portion is still there, the game's diverse array of Mechs have been diminished somewhat by the aforementioned game imbalance caused by the superior design of Clan OmniMechs.
In conclusion, MechCommander would have been a great game, if not for the game design oversights and flaws that hold it back.