Mechwarrior Online is a free to play game about stomping around in a giant robot blowing up other giant robots. Feel free to read the rest of the review but if those words alone didn't cause you to rush out and download it, then the game probably isn't for you.
There are four general classes of mechs ranging from lightest to heaviest, Light, Medium, Heavy and Assault. In general terms the Light mechs are fast but lightly armoured and the Assault mechs are slow but heavily armed and armoured, with the other classes filling in the middle. This can be confusing though as mechs often defy their class or people customize them to do so. You may think that being the most armed and armoured is the only way to go but the role of different classes is played out well here. Light mechs not only run rings around the Assault class mechs but provide support by jamming radar signals, some mechs specialise in long range missiles, while others are close range brawlers. There is a lot of diversity to the tactics in Mechwarrior and any type of mech can be effective on the battlefield. At the moment there are two map modes, one were you battle it to the death or capture the enemies base and one where it is timed and you capture different sectors which give you points as time ticks by. Both of these end up being death matches most of the time, though there can be sneaky tactics. There are other modes planned so there is something to look forward to.
The fun really comes in two forms in this game. The acquisition of resources and customising your mech is half of the fun of Mechwarrior. You get to buy new mechs equip them with a range of weapons, armour and defensive measures like an anti-missile system. It's a bit of a let-down that you can't customise your mech when it is stuck in a battle that you have died in. I know it is aiming for realism but it is a game after all and it would make the whole experience a lot more fluid to allow customisation when you are dead. You also gain experience points that can be used to make each mech model more powerful. The other half is blowing all of that stuff off your enemy mechs. The game brings this in superb detail. Guns drop off, legs are lost leaving you hopping slowly across the field, it's all very cool. In order to achieve this destruction though, you need to work with your team. Running out alone can get you killed very fast but working together and targeting specific areas on a mech can help you rack up kills.
Mechwarrior Online is in an open beta phase at the moment with a lot of changes still being applied to the whole game. However anyone can play it and spend money on it, the the whole "beta" phrasing is merely applied in the hopes that people won't be to disappointed with the odd bug. Even when the game is fully launched it will still be undergoing a lot of changes and new mechs and maps will be added all the time. Having said that, I have been in the closed beta since near the start and there have been a lot of improvements in that time. The graphics have improved massively over the development phase and so has the optimisation. I have been playing the game on a mixture of high and medium settings but during the closed beta version I often had to run it on low just so it was playable. Bug wise it has actually been pretty good with no major issues. The main problem with it is that I doubt there will ever be an Australian server which means you'll never get a good ping here. Still it is playable, just not as fluid as it is for others.
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