Stompy Mecha Thread

Yeah, something has to balance those clans. I’d almost say give them an 8 man team instead of 12, because of clan stars and shit. Given how they destroyed the board game and such.

I’d talk about Heavy Gear but NDA. I’ll say this much, it’s a totally different beast from MWO. More like Call of Mech Duty once they get the crouch and prone and cover shooting stuff in there that we’ve talked about. They’re definitely more of a VOTOMS style mech and not a colossal metal monster. Plus, they have dodging and stuff. Much more maneuverable.

I checked out the Heavy Gear website and some screenshots yesterday. It looked pretty slick (though maybe a bit too shiny/plastic-looking with some textures IMO), and those screens brought back some happy memories of Heavy Gear 2.

I’ve never heard of VOTOMs, but I think I’ll be happy so long as the new HG hews somewhat close to HG2. I never minded that the Heavy Gear jaegers were a bit smaller and faster than Battletech mechs because they still felt like big machines you were piloting instead of a giant agile ninja character that could immediately reverse and side strafe. (Or maybe that’s just the rose-tinted glasses talking).

Oh, you’ve not seen VOTOMS? Well, allow me to show you the stairway to heaven.

According to the Steam page, Brigador releases tomorrow. It is a mech game with an isometric view, and all the colors of a neon dystopia.

Anybody else interested in this?

Oh yes, yes indeedily.

Way too shiny and plastic. Also too rounded for a lot of the gears.

Not sure why they’re deviating so much from the trademark gear look from before.

Well, it’s still early access. It doesn’t even have more stompy or explosion sounds and you have to hand edit a .cfg file if you want to change key bindings!

It’s quite fun as-is, but it’s missing an overall structure.

Yeah I finally got around to buying it. I think I agree with your assessment. I’m having a blast just messing around with it, but I’m curious to see how they plan on expanding the campaign. I hope they do add more to it.

I bought a cheap Xbox 360 a few months ago and remembered Chromehounds sounded cool. Is it still worth playing now that the multiplayer is dead, or should I just not bother?

Apparently this is an homage to Chromehounds, FYI.

Corhek, don’t bother. The multiplayer was the meat of Chromehounds. Unfortunately that’s how you played most of the content, including A.I. opponents. It was a real gem, but they shut off the servers so the whole game is useless now, all that’s left is basically a tutorial. Would pay top dollar for a Chromehounds 2!

I took Brigador out for a spin. It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous.

The thing that was tripping me up were the controls; they just felt totally wrong. I first tried with a game controller. It had seriously bad deadzones, the twinstick-style shooter aiming seemed to make no sense since it just gave directional firing but to actually hit anything you need to also need to be able to adjust the aiming height. So I was pretty much not hitting anything. It didn’t help that the tutorial campaign messages are written for keyboard + mouse.

Ok, the controller support isn’t any good. So I switched to keyboard + mouse. But it too didn’t feel good. Direct movement with WASD on an isometric display? Insane and clumsy. And then there were odd things like toggling ramming mode on a tank would switch it to use classic tank controls instead of direct movement, which was very disorienting.

Turns out that the game was originally designed purely for tank controls but they added the directional movement later on. And for whatever reason the horrible directional movement is now the default. Switch to “relative” controls in the settings, and suddenly everything just clicks into place.

The other thing I was feeling a bit unhappy about was that the gameplay was a bit sluggish. Again, it appears to be something they changed in the new edition when adding controller support. Since the new movement and aiming models were so clumsy, they had to slow down the game to make it playable. So be sure to switch the game speed from 80% to 100% in the settings.

I’ll have to try the tank controls, thanks for the tip. The charge move seems to be broken when holding the S key.

The aiming is a bit frustrating. I have the reticle at the enemy’s feet and some rounds sail right by. Maybe I’ll get used to it.

I was put off at first by the low rent presentation, but the combat itself is starting to grow on me. It helps to pretend like I’m playing a game from the 90s.

Yeah, I don’t think they explain this part about aiming at all. There is no targeting reticle; the red/blue lines are only showing the first 80% of the projectile’s path. If the lines actually intersect something, they’ll hit that. But the point where the line tapers off is not where it’ll impact the ground. That’ll actually be a lot further away.

This is a good guide on how the game actually works: Steam Community :: Guide :: Brigador - The Solo Nobre Murder Spree Handbook (Update for version 1.16!)

Luckily, it’s very easy to pretend that :-P The only thing that makes it clear it’s a '90s homage rather than the real thing is widescreen support.

One of the options is to turn the game speed up - it defaults to 80%? I believe they have it that low for controller users so with a M+K you’ll want to crank it up to 100%.

Agree that the controls are clunky but I’m getting used to it.

Setting the game speed to 100% makes such a huge difference. I try to give indie devs the benefit of the doubt, but it kills me that they’d just dump it at 80% in the off chance that someone might play with a controller. It does make it harder I guess.

I’m also having a much better time after leaving the pointless campaign and its requirement to use stupid bulldozers and flying units for some missions. I bought this game to pilot a mech, so freelance is the best way to go.

Guys. Guys. OMG guys. This fella made a patch that, I dunno how, but somehow allows Missionforce: Cyberstorm to run on Windows 7-10 without any issues!!!

I tried it the other day and it worked PERFECTLY. I was so god damned happy because it’s seriously one of my top mech games ever.

Well that makes me sad that I have no idea after my last move where that disk you sent me ended up!

You should follow the link anyway. ;)

ARISE THREAD.

So the other day I got Future Cop LAPD up and running thanks to the installer these guys made and wow, that game is fun and difficult. Totally bought it just on the first map. Great stompy action though.