battleMETAL

Do you like Mechwarrior 2? The developer of this does too and it shows! It feels great, plays great and I just love it! Super easy mod support as well! I have modded in the MW2 soundtrack and now it feels even better! <3 It is one of those games I just got an instant crush on, exactly why that is is hard to explain but I will try to give some pros and cons on why. Pros: + A very present Mechwarrior 2/Mech sim retro feel, but with modern fps controls (similar to Mechwarrior Online) + Lots of options for loadouts for the mechs with 3 Chassis available, lots of weapons and weapon group settings. + You can target specific parts of the enemy mechs and blow the off! + Great mod support! + Engine is open source! + More content is coming! + Multiplayer! Coop and deathmatch! + Friendly developer (discord link in the steam forum) Cons: - Feels a little bare bones, but the developer promises more content in time! - HUD can sometimes feel a bit cluttered The developer has also said that the game can be used as plattform for anyone who wants to use it to make more content. Mechwarrior 2 total conversion when? ;)

battleMETAL is clearly made with passion by a fan of mech games so much so that I have to commend the developer for what he was able to do with what at one point used to be Quake (yes, this is built on Quake, well, DarkPlaces, but still...). There are several new games out there right now using DarkPlaces (Wrath and Doombringer for example) but it’s clear that they still share DNA at their core with the iconic shooter. Wrath is clearly Quake and Doombringer is clearly Quake3 and Doom mashed together but BattleMETAL is more of the unique outlier. Imagine handing over an ice cream truck to several groups of mechanics, maybe for some TV contest show that stays around way longer than it should, maybe there is a show like this? I feel like this is a thing. Anyway, while everyone else transforms it into some other truck or something, the battleMETAL team turns it into a flying-motorcycle-tank. The movement seems to be the only thing that has really survived which comes in handy as you find yourself running around and strafing enemy mechs in what turned out to be surprisingly faster gamepay than I was expecting. Moving at speed is also good given that most of the levels are large sandboxes and much of the terrain can be traversed. Except around the edges, marking the bounds of the map (in most cases). I would have liked to see more natural barriers, perhaps some steep drop off points or other hazards. Unfortunately, I haven’t logged a lot of hours but so far the overall performance is great, at least on my aging Windows based system despite being 10+ years old (geForce 670). Off the bat, the major issue for me was time spent trying to figure out the loadout. That screen makes me feel like I was blindfolded, beaten senseless and lead into the cockpit of a 747 and asked to fly. To which I reply, “but I’m blindfolded”, and my captor exclaims “oh, right!” Removes my blindfold to reveal a confusing array of blinking lights and knobs and levers. And I think to myself, maybe it was better with the blindfold on. I should point out, I’m not a pilot. Basically, it would be a very confusing situation for me, is the point I’m trying to make. Despite having glossed over the tutorial section, I found myself asking a lot of questions like ‘is this a good setup?’, ‘Is this the right setup for this mech?’, ‘Is this actually set up at all?’, ‘When do I get to play the game?’ However, to be fair, it’s hard to fault a game for doing what a game of this type is known for (although it does reinforce why I don’t typically play them). Visually, the game has a more abstract mix of art styles with the most pronounced being a more stylized cartoon but I have to give credit for the amount of original content in the game, in a world where many indie games are cobbled together from free art packs (or just outright stolen) and basic game starter-kit templates, it’s refreshing to see the amount of effort put into this and for a lone developer this was no small task. The soundtrack compliments the visuals and pulls you into this dreamy, surreal aural landscape. It might still be a little rough around the edges but it’s always receiving updates and on that note I wanted to make sure to point out the level of support from the developer is something truly next level (and this goes a hell of a long way in my book). Keep up the great work! The game is also open source, so if you really want to get into this game, you can REALLY get into it and change pretty much anything, not something you see with a lot of games these days either and modding support also goes a long way. Overall I feel the game sets out to do what was intended and would recommend giving it a try.

It's like Earthsiege 2 but much faster paced and I dig it. Love the music and the look of the game.

battleMETAL reminds me most of ye olde Warhawk for the PS1, and applies new game design to scratch the itch that game did. Running around, blowing stuff up as a giant robot, exploring lofi planets, all that good stuff. I've been saying for a while that retro-styled indie games were going to take on the PS1/N64 aesthetic, and battleMETAL does that by bringing in the kind of customization, playability, and vibe you'd want from a new take on the genre.

[b]New Review: Saturday 2, June, 2022[/b] I tried the game and well, it has a good concept, you can get some fun with it, but it needs much more polish in many of the areas of the game to be real good. Right now, the game lacks the attention to the detail that most good games have to really recommend it. I wish the dev polished it, it could be a really good mech game with more work. My problem was that it crashed on me, so I didn't play it very long, and well, some menus were really really ugly, like really ugly compared to most games. So I refunded it, because I was short on money too, but I put it on my wishlist again. For the effort the game deserves a good review, the dev made the game with a very old engine, what is already an achievement, he just needs to step up the quality, and make it flow better overall. By the way, the "jump jets" equivalent in the game also need to feel less stiff. [b]Score:[/b] I give it a 2.5 of 5 stars, but don't believe me so much, I played too little, most of the time played I have, it was on the menus. [b]PD:[/b] Dev, I hope you don't be disheartened by my review or others negative reviews, I hope you can continue developing it, it could be great with more work into the details.

Yeah im sorry, but it's too rough. I do wish the developer best of luck but... - Everything is clunky and unintuitive, which is a shame - The tutorials are oddly done... - The movement is slidey, which is a bit unforgiveable for a mechwarrior inspired game. This probably wouldn't have bugged me as much if i couldn't see me sliding several feet.... I usually don't care about floaty/slidey movement in game, except for mech / mechwarrior type games. I definitely feel like this game is more trying to be in the Robot / mecha / gundam area, and should probably have reflected that more accurately with the style of the mechs. I'm guessing this is where the Quake influences come in. This is what made me hesitant to buy the game originally a couple weeks ago when i found the game. But then it went out sale for 90% and i was like $1 sure w.e. But this is so against what I expected and wanted that I'm refunding a dollar game, which I've never done before. To summarize it was an expectation issue.

Mechwarrior 2 if it was made by Ville kallio

Pretty neat mech game running on DarkPlaces, feels like a nice mix of Quake and Mech2

5/10 I don't know why this is being compared to mechwarrior 2, but this isn't even in the same league as a MW game. it doesn't even feel like a mech game and controlls like a normal fps. This would be tolerable if it weren't for the plethora of bugs and the nonsensical story that came with it. My favorite bug being the one that will often spawn you in a place that gets the player stuck on the map if they forget to pick a start point. Balancing is also a mess since there are only 3 mechs and energy weapons mostly usless outside of the emp. All in all, a very buggy 3 hour fps that pretends to be a mech game.

Game seems promising though I do have some issues with it. I haven't played too much yet but here are my thoughts: I would like a bit more customization than the game currently seems to offer. I prefer the mech movement where you turn the body rather than strafe. At least the light mech doesn't feel very stompy, maybe the bigger ones will remedy that once I get them though. These are all "I" statements so this might be a matter of taste or a matter of development. Things felt like they went a bit too quick while the time to kill was still very high. I will still recommend the game as I want more to play it and see how they feel about it and because it's pretty much the only game in its genre except for MW5 and less said about MW5 the better. Editing this review to say that the issue I had with Time To Kill does get better with the bigger mechs when you have more guns to bring to bear, or maybe it's just a skill issue for me with the scout mech you get first.