BattleTech
| Developer: Westwood | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Infocom | Sound: |
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| Year: 1989 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Role-playing game | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
7/10 | |
Follow in the footsteps of Jason Youngblood, a young mecha pilot (a giant armed robot, the spearhead of the army of the future) and son of a renowned officer. As he completes his military training, war suddenly breaks out, and he finds himself tasked with organising resistance against a bloodthirsty invading army (which also operates powerful mechas)…
Fully named BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception, this science fiction title is based on the tabletop role-playing game of the same name (from which the MechWarrior series will be derived), which comes with a hexagonal grid world map, figurines, and dice.
Jason’s training is an opportunity to get acquainted with the somewhat primitive interface and keyboard commands (I advise using the numeric keypad to move diagonally). The early stages are tedious, as they involve back-and-forth trips between the training centre and the stock market, and repeatedly enter the same anti-copy protection codes, indicated on the mecha’s technical sheet (included in the manual, which can be downloaded from Hall of Light).
After the attack, not having thought to consult the map, I got lost in the vast world (vast and deserted), and found myself walking along a uniform coastline for kilometres, reminiscing about Bermuda Project. This is not a compliment.
Fortunately, once I found the second city and got back on track with the storyline, the hardest part was behind me. The story that unfolds is engaging and well-written, the dialogues witty and not overly sentimental. Furthermore, once you meet your first team member, the tactical turn-based combat really comes into its own. Despite a somewhat cumbersome control scheme, especially at the start, patience ultimately pays off.
A few tips for the road:
- In combat, you must keep moving in order to shoot. That’s how it works.
- When it comes time to buy weapons, make sure you only buy one (the second replaces the first, and if the first costs 1500 credits…)
- Time passes even when you’re standing still (and combats can occur), so there’s no point in pacing in front of the stock market.
In my view, certain limitations prevent BattleTech from ranking among the classics: it’s too easy to avoid combat, too easy to earn a lot of money by playing the stock market (just after saving), and finally, you collect far too few equipment and items, with no way to resell them, to boot.
A more strategy-oriented sequel will be released for PC-DOS: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge (1990).
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