MechAssault Preview

The mech genre has gotten a serious shot in the arm recently, with giant robots starring in a wide range of releases. The Xbox, which looks a bit like a Transformer itself, will likely have a solid assortment of mech games in its library by year's end. One of the most anticipated is MechAssault, a promising action game from Day 1 Studios that marries the MechWarrior license with some good old-fashioned arcade-style BattleTech action and Xbox Live. We recently had a chance to check out a near final build of the game and take it for a spin on- and offline. We're pleased to see that the game's slick visuals and accessible gameplay are coming together quite nicely.

MechAssault is set in the distant future of the 31st century, when 40-foot-tall walking mechs that are armed to the teeth are as common as sports cars. Well, maybe not that common, but there sure seem to be a lot of them in the game. You'll assume the role of a soldier leading a covert force to take out a planet's defenses and prepare it for an invasion. Unfortunately, things go awry, and you're separated from the group. The game's first level begins after your dropship's crash and sets the tone for what lies ahead--just you and a mech against a boatload of enemy forces.

You'll find two main modes in MechAssault: campaign and multiplayer. Campaign is an offline story mode that will offer 20 missions to go through. Each mission will feature a varying number of objectives, some of which are added mid-mission, and unfold in standard linear fashion. As you go through a level, you'll be able to collect weapon and shield upgrades that will prove to be invaluable in later levels. Controlling your mech is a breeze, as the game is basically a stripped-down mech experience that leans heavily toward accessible action. You'll move your mech with the left analog stick and look around with the right stick. Clicking the right stick in will let you use jump jets if your mech is outfitted with them. The left trigger will cycle through your mech's available weapons, and the right will fire them. You'll also be able to use the face buttons to cycle and fire weapons, but we found that the triggers worked the best for us. As you might expect, you'll find a number of mechs--roughly a dozen--to choose from over the course of the game, and each one handles a bit differently. The lighter 30-ton mechs are quite a bit more mobile than the 100-ton behemoths, but they pack considerably less punch and are likely to drop like a canary in a coal mine during head-to-head combat.

MechAssault's multiplayer mode will offer three game options to choose from: local Xbox, system link, and Xbox Live for up to eight players. All three options will feature the grinder, destruction, team destruction, last man standing, team last man standing, and "not it" game types. Grinder is a killing frenzy that challenges you to stay alive. Destruction is a standard deathmatch that crowns the player with the most kills when time runs out as the winner. Team destruction is simply a cooperative variant of destruction. Last man standing challenges you to be the last mech on the field when times runs out, and team last man standing is its cooperative variant. Finally, "not it" is a killing frenzy in which the goal is to be "it," as you'll score points for your kills. Becoming "it" requires you to kill the player currently labeled as such. If you manage to rack up the most kills before time runs out, you'll be named the winner.

An Audio Visual Assault

We had the opportunity to try out the various multiplayer modes using the Xbox Live headset and were quite taken with the experience. The game played smoothly, and the voice chat worked well. There was a slight lag with the speech, but it was negligible. There was a slightly tinny quality to the hail of insulting epithets and victory cheers that poured through the headset, but the game ran well. The only real hitch was ensuring players didn't leave immediately after a game, as you won't be able to coordinate what to play next over the communicator when you leave, since you're kicked back a menu.

In terms of its presentation, MechAssault offers a very satisfying mix of slick visuals and immersive sound. The game features a variety of clean, detailed environments. You'll tromp through a mix of natural environments such as forests, craters, and snowy mountains, as well as sterile environments like cities and military installations. You'll find weather effects such as rain, fog, and snow thrown in, depending on the setting, and they'll affect how heavily you rely on your radar. The various structures that populate the environments offer solid but initially unspectacular detail. To be fair, there's only so much you can do to tart up a gray building. However, the detail on the buildings takes a dramatic and positive turn for the better once they start to sustain damage, thanks to the game's impressive damage model. Structures will reflect incremental damage based on a variety of factors such as their size, the weapon you use, and the amount of damage they've already sustained. You'll see everything from large-scale details such as chunks of a building being blown away and all the windows shattering outward the first time you fire a rocket into it. Once buildings sustain enough damage, they'll collapse in a suitably dramatic explosion that is enhanced by a satisfying heap of particle effects. You'll also notice heavy usage of particle effects in things like the exhaust trails of your missiles and the dirt kicked up by attacks that strike the ground near you. The enemies you'll face in a level are also quite detailed, and they'll also reflect a certain amount of damage, depending on the enemy. You'll see enemy mechs and assorted vehicles, such as tanks and helicopters, sustain some damage when you attack, although normal humans are pretty cut and dried--there isn't much incremental damage to show when you're stomping on ground troops in your mech.

The audio in MechAssault complements the onscreen action quite nicely, thanks to the game's effective use of a wide selection of sound effects and Dolby 5.1 support. While the game is pretty silent, except for radio chatter, certain portions of MechAssault will feature a broad array of explosions and weapons fire going off around you. The voice acting is decent, with the actors speak their lines with a good amount of conviction. When playing on Xbox Live, you'll be able to select from a nice assortment of voice masks to add some style to the proceedings. You'll be able to choose sound like everything from the dark master to our personal favorite, the robot, during a game.

Judging from what we've played so far, MechAssault is shaping up very well. While we could see the single-player game becoming stale after a while, the multiplayer game options, especially on Xbox Live, are very sweet. Thanks to the voice masks, the ability to talk trash has been taken to a whole new level of annoyance. It's one thing to be told you suck by someone in a normal voice, but it hearing it said in a robot or little girl's voice is just a bit more painful. MechAssault is currently slated to ship alongside the launch of Xbox Live on November 15.