When I think of MechWarrior and the BattleTech universe in general I think of manning the inside of a cockpit, blasting missiles, strafing while watching my armor change colors and sometimes getting toasted instead of doing the toasting. This is all great but there is much more to the BattleTech verse than cockpit view battles, it also produces some great RTS games like MechWarrior: Tactical Command that just found itself a place on iOS. Pick it up today for $.99 (normally $3.99)
Storyline:
Set during the chaotic events of the 3050 Clan Invasion; command the mechwarriors of Winfield’s Regiment as they struggle to defend the Federated Commonwealth from the onslaught of Clan Jade Falcon.
The storyline has a lot of depth and solid cutscenes and voice acting, especially for an iOS game which tends to skip a bit on cutscenes, story and graphics to allow for the platform. This skips on nothing.
Description:
Hands On:
I was hooked right off the bat with the solid quality of the graphics both on the iPhone and iPad. Since the game was primarily designed for the iPad I thought that playing it on my phone while waiting for my iPad to charge would be a bit painful. I was so pleasantly surprised that I found myself playing for hours on my phone before remembering I was supposed to be reviewing it mainly on the iPad. Actually part of me prefers it on the iPhone because of the portability that it allows that you just don’t quite get on the iPad. I have my phone with me EVERYWHERE and that means this game was constantly at my finger tips.
The graphics looked like a PC game which let’s face it is nice but useless if the game has other problems. The controls certainly weren’t a problem, the touch responsiveness was spot on and most controls were intuitive so the only thing I had to look up was how to repair, you can only do this one unit at a time and only that unit should be selected. Selecting is a breeze because the HUD has all your units in the upper right hand corner, tapping on them selects and deselects them. It also has a full map in the lower right corner which includes a moving field for your view location and damage indicators both on your unit symbols in the corner and on all the units both friendly and enemy in the field. In some ways I actually liked the controls better on this platform than the PC since there are no hot keys to memorize just action wheels that appear at the different possible action locations and menus.
Don’t think though that because the controls are simplified the game is easy. Even on lower difficulties this game is a challenge and requires a lot of management and strategy. Particularly when you hit around the 5th mission or so and you find that you can win a mission without completing all the objectives but if you are objective obsessive like myself you might be playing the same mission several times trying to get the every success. Though I wore a headset to take in the dynamic sound I’m sure some pretty decent cussing was heard rooms away.
It takes a while into the missions before you can customize your loadouts or have different mechs to work with but they are worth the wait, this makes it so that you concentrate on the early levels on the mechanics and strategy rather than builds too. The missions really mix it up to so even though you can’t make the mechs to your specs you still keep enthralled.
Last Call:
This game is a no brainer for fans on the BattleTech universe and RTS players alike. MechWarrior: Tactical Command has great graphics, great gameplay and an interesting storyline, all done on iOS with solid controls. Pick this one up quick because at midnight PST it goes from $.99 t0 $3.99, which if you miss the deadline is still a great deal for hours of gameplay.
[easyreview title=”MechWarrior: Tactical Command Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]
