Alright, here's what I did.
Alright, so for awhile now you wonderful people have put up with me slipping further and further into the depths of mech-fuelled madness. Oh, it started innocently enough, playing a lightweight Battletech boardgame based on the Heroclix system. Then it deepened when I found Megamek and campaigns for it, and now my living room is dominated by a Steel Battalion setup.
Throughout it all, though, what I always really wanted was a good remake of Mechwarrior 4. There was something about that game that just grabbed me for hours on end, when I would consistently beat all challengers in crazy Solaris matches. That's when I found out about <a href="www.mechlivinglegends.net"> MechWarrior: Living Legends [/url] and started figuring out what it would take to get into it.
Well, it wasn't easy for me to figure out but that doesn't mean it needs to be difficult for you to figure out. In hindsight there were a few things that would have made life MUCH easier for me getting the game up and running. So without further ado... here's the Megathread. Everything you might need to know about Living Legends.
Battletech? MechWarrior? What the hell?It's the far future (3068 or so), and the Human empire has expanded so far that Terra is barely remembered as the place where it all started. Now, battles are fought between militaristic Clan warriors and the staunch defenders of the various Inner Sphere houses (think: rival factions all united under one banner) on hundreds of planets. The weapon of choice is no longer the assault rifle, a hover tank, or even some fancy laser but instead a Battlemech... 100 tons of firepower, heavy armor and mobility, designed to lay waste to enemy armor as quickly as a fat kid lays waste to cake. Heavy tanks, speedy hover tanks, aerospace fighters and VTOLs still buzz about in the battlefield, but the 'Mech has become the platform of choice for most heavy weapons.
Alright... but I'm sure there's more I need to know. Tell me, or else.You got me, there is. You need to realize that these 'Mechs are different than the Mecha that is popular within Anime. Those Mecha manage to be incredibly agile and rely on incredibly high tech weapons and melee combat to quite a bit. Battlemechs do not do this. They lumber onto the battlefield (for the most part, but we'll get to that later), striding towards the enemy while launching missiles at long range targets, firing heavy lasers into closer targets, and sustaining withering blows to their armor. You'll also not find melee combat (in MW:LL at least), nor shields. Think a bit closer to our current technology (anti-missile systems exist, and high-caliber rifles are popular) while a bit more sci-fi (particle cannons and numerous flavors of lasers exist).
So why should I play MechWarrior: Living Legends?Because of this:
Ta-da!Basically, it is the best multiplayer Mech piloting game I have seen to date. In addition, it's the only one I've seen that allows you to choose from a variety of positions. Lumbering around the battlefield in a slow but heavily armed 'Mech not quite your thing? Well, how about zipping across the battlefield in a speedy
RVN-3L "Raven" light 'Mech? As a scout, you'd be automatically providing incredibly useful intel on enemy movements while at the same time jamming enemy missiles and harassing lighter enemy units.
Still no? What about lobbing salvos of long range missiles from a tracked assault vehicle into enemy targets? Or setting up heavier mobile artillery to shell an enemy's base? Or even hopping into a VTOL or Aerospace fighter to bring death from above?
While the action centers around Battlemechs, MW:LL brings combined arms into the fray. I've had huge amounts of fun using the standard
Battle Armor and assaulting from below. It's hard to beat the feeling of blowing apart a 'Mech's leg without him even seeing you with blasting charges.
Ok, I'm interested. Now what? How much does it cost? How do I get into it?Well, that's a bit more difficult to answer. MW:LL is a mod based on the Crysis engine. As such, you'll obviously need Crysis and then the MW:LL installer before you can get in. So let's take it one step at a time.
First off, you'll need Crysis. Or, more specifically, Crysis Wars. The best way to get this is currently via
Steam, by buying the Crysis Warhead game. This will get you the most up to date version of Crysis Wars, and the Steam version works just fine with the mod.
Once you get that downloaded and installed, you'll want to hop onto any Crysis Wars server that has Punkbuster enabled and make sure you can log on properly. Once you do that, you're ready to actually install the mod.
NOTE: You might get an error on trying to connect, saying "CD Key is invalid, would you like to edit it?". Don't fear! Your key is not invalid. Check out
this post for information on how to fix it. It's really not that difficult. Basically, Steam's "installscript" pushes a CD key into your registry that doesn't include dashes. Real CD Keys include dashes, so you just need to pop them in there in that script, or edit your registry and remove that part of the script.
NOTE 2: You'll have to create a Gamespy account as part of this. I've never had to log in more than the first time I did this, but that's the way it works.
Installing the mod is joyfully simple. Grab the installation file from
here and click Next a bunch of times. Once the installer is done, make sure that you mark "Run Auto Update" and then an Auto Updater will start its work and will bring you up to the latest.
That's it! You then just click Launch MWLL and you're in the game.
Some quick basics about the game:
W A S D and mouse is the general control scheme. In a Mech, W and S are throttle up and throttle down (and you can go into reverse) and the mouse aims weapons and twists your torso appropriately (so you can move in one direction and fire in another).
Clicking fires the weapons group you have currently selecting, right-clicking does group 2, mousewheel click does group 3 (by default). The arrow keys and Enter key assign/reassign weapons into different groups (upper right of your HUD).
If you miss messages in text, just hit ~ to bring up the console and see the messages you missed. Handy, as there's a lot of communication going around.
To get a missile lock, hover the aiming point over a vehicle far enough away. When the tone goes solid, click away and adore the whooshing of missiles.
TAG is basically a laser targeter. NARC is a beacon that can be shot onto a mech. Both will guide all missiles to them after the missile is fired.
AC is Autocannon. Lower values are smaller caliber, which fire faster and farther but pack less punch.
Don't be afraid to try new things!
