Very fun although the presentation has aged somewhat poorly
Offcourse the backstory to the battletech universe is much deeper and is very interesting but MechWarrior IV takes place on only a singItsplanet and its orbiting moon.
You play ian dresari and your family is the rightful ruler of Kentares IV however your cousin william dresari launches a coup with the backing of the larger steiner faction. The coup succeeds and you vow revenge and to take back what is yours and so the stage is set for MechWarrior IV.
Its not entirely a good story but one to give you a reason to keep playing, a few parts are quite poor noticeably the 'save the sister' part which made me cringe but it does present at least one choice and consequence scenario much later in the game of either saving the sister or going after military cache of mechwarriors to use in the final mission and speaking of missions theres alot of them in the singleplayer campaign, 7 ops with 26 missions in total which presents quite a lengthy game even just for singleplayer campaign let alone the instant action option.
The mission briefings are made so that you select a mission you get a series of objectives and nav points on a map which tell you what might occur and the characters (played by actors) are talking to you (and your character talks back to hem) in the corner, i must say some of the acting is quite good, other ones are quite poor so its a mix bag.
Before you undertake a mission you can pick your own mech out of the ones you have managed to salvage from previous missions (usually destroying the odd enemy mech will suffice) or have completed a mission were the reward would be some new mechs.
After you select a mech and your 'lance mates' (your team which can sometimes be up to three) you can also customise the mechs, this includes a choice of paint - some are pretty neat , then theres the slightly more complicated task of balancing your mech with armour, armour type, heat sinks anti missile systems, jump jets , engine speed and a plethora of different weapons and different weapon types.
Needless to say theres a hell of alot of choice and it can be quite addicting just fine tuning your mech so its has the best possible choices fitted, and is suited to a specific mission, for example in the artic missions your not going to want to worry much about your mech overheating (which results in a temporary loss of control which can be quite unnerving if theres a huge fight going on around you) so you may choose to fine tune your mech to have no heat sinks, wereas in the desert missions this would be a huge problem so you'll want to up the heat sinks, however everything needs to be balanced because different mech chassis (light medium heavy etc) have a limited number of tonnage they can support and everything takes up valuable space/weight on a mech so you gotta think carefully what you want!
And then theres the firing sequence controls, once youve added all your weapons to the mech you can select in what order they will be fired or if theyre all fired in a group, this can be useful if you want say small lasers to fire first then press a button switch to missiles etc, i usually just divide up the heavier weapons from the intial quick recharging laser based weaponrary so i dont overheat my mech to quickly in a fight.
During singleplayer the intial missions your in a weedy little mech and eventually have to face down a few mediums and heavy mechs before you upgrade to something better, and eventually end up owning the best dam mechs on the planet, so the singleplayer can be quite challenging at times too. The combat itself is extremely fun, some of the fights especially with groups of enemies can be very frantic running around, jump jetting, going behind cover, your mech has quite a few operational controls too for example the rotating upper chassis can enable you to fire aat the side whislt running in another direction which can be quite helpful.
Furthermore you can also target specific parts of a rival mech if your a good shot, hellspawn mechs for example have a rocket launcher mounted on their shoulder which you can completely destroy eliminating whatever weapons they had placed there, or you could go for a mechs legs to slow them down, blast of their arms etc, all the damage information is displayed in the radar depending on what your target is, green is at full health for a part but eventually during a fight you'll see a mech target go fro mgreen to yellow, to orange to red then flashing dark red signifying a part is nearly destroyed - black meaning that part has been.
And eventually offcourse you'll score a kill and a mech will fall over to the floor and you'll see its reactor blow.
Now whislt the game is extremely fun the graphical presentation has taken a hit over the years, it still looks acceptable if the terrain and sky is incredibly UNdetailed, the mechs themselves look ok, abit too blocky by todays standards but the animation is still pretty decent.
The music for the game is pretty good, some very nice tracks in the game 'closing video b,' 'armed', 'steiner defeat' and 'panorama 'just for example, other tracks are much more suited to the occasionally intense fights you'll experience during the game, such as wednesday 7 (played during installation) and 'core'.
The sound effects are also acceptable, nothing will particulary stand out offcourse but you'll easily tell the difference between ballistic based weapons, missile based weapons and the laser weapons.
The acting as I said is a mix bag and thus the voice overs are too, the lance mates are all fine but some of the voice overs are pretty poor during the briefings.
The AI of enemy mechs and in general is pretty solid, I havent witnessed the AI either of my lance mates or the enemy do anything particular stupid or get lost even in the dense urban maps, the only problem ive had is that sometimes my lance mates would follow me even if i gave an order for them to do so but this is a very rare occurence.
So overall id say MechWarrior IV is a great game, its aged ok graphically not so well but the core gameplay is still very fun, and its cheap these days too on various budget labels so worth picking up , even just for the singleplayer portion of the game which is both lengthy and at times quite challenging with enough variation in objectives and even if you fail a certain objective it might not quite be the end of a mission, shame the story isnt too great but as I said presents a good excuse as any to stomp around in a battlemech.
Pros:
.Interesting setting , this is battle tech afterall.
.Excellent customisation options for your acquired mechs.
.The combat is very fun.
.Lengthy singleplayer campaign
.Some missions and firefights can be quite a challenge
.Music and voiceacting is in general very good.
.Competent AI displayed by both team mates and enemies.
Cons:
.Graphics are pretty poor - theyve aged alot
.Only 1 mission in the entire game that has choice and consequence (save the sister or go for the battlemechs!??!)
.Storyline is uninvolving and rather boring at times.
.Only 8 mechs in instant action fights (2 teams of 4 max)