Well I have been waiting patiently for two MechWarrior mods (which take place in the BattleTech universe) for various games. Mechwarrior Living Legends is a total conversion mod for Crysis and MekTek’s upcoming (unofficial) MekPak 4 patch is for Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries.

MP4 looks interesting and will add some new features to the game, unfortunately the MechWarrior series lost my interest after MW4: Mercs as the MechAssault games felt a little too arcade-like for my taste. I prefer the sim-aspects of the mech games… When I want to play an arcade game I play something like: Gyruss, Packman, King of Fighters, Exed Exes, Rival Schools, etc… (you know, an actual arcade game). Mercenaries was released in 2002 so there is only so much you can do for such an old game engine, but it is sill a very fun game. There are 22/22 players on my dedicated server playing the map Lunacy right now and for such and old game there are still quite a few active players and more than one gaming league for it.

I am a little more excited about upcoming the Crysis total conversion mod, MechWarrior Living Legends. The MWLL graphics look amazing and it promises a dynamic environment (day turns to night, more destroyable environments, more players per online game) in which you can not only pilot a mech, but also jets, tanks, battle armor, and other vehicles. The downside is that Crysis requires a pretty modern system to run on. My Overclocked Dual Core AMD/2GB RAM/nVidia 9500GT system can only get great frame rates on the medium graphics settings (well I can turn a few things to high and still play it). The downside of MWLL is that there are not nearly as many mechs as the current version of MW4: Mercs (>100 at last count). If you want to see some screenshots of MWLL there is a gallery here.

VT ControllerI should mention that I really do get into the sim aspects maybe a bit too much, I even use a Steel Battalion controller (VT Controller) for MechWarrior (I hope I can do alright in MWLL using it). The thing has over 30 buttons, a throttle, 3 pedals, twin flight sticks, toggle switches, and a hat… Yes it is probably overkill, but what can I say? It is awesome!!!! (I even wrote custom button mapping configurations so I rarely have to use the keyboard at all to play). I guess I should mention Steel Battalion (Tekki in Japan) too.. It was a very good mech game for X-Box released in 2002, but the lack of user generated maps and mods really took a lot away from what otherwise was an amazing console game.

There is no release date for either mod, but I would rather wait and get a better gaming experience than have a rushed final product! I sincerely hope that both mods are good and attract more players to a fantastic style of game!