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Columns > MomGamer > #82: I Miss My Joystick
What would it take to lure me back into PC gaming?  I was talking to a friend of mine who is a PC gamer. We used to play a lot together. He asked me point blank what it would take to bring me back off the consoles and into what he called "real gaming". And I do have to admit that I've been missing my joystick. I sort of hemmed and hawed and said something lame, but I've been thinking about it a lot. This takes a bit of a stroll down memory lane to explain. Back in March 2003, I got some news that seriously upset me. Mechwarrior 5 was cancelled. You're probably thinking that this is a little, well, odd. And it is. But I'd been working to get things straightened out in the Successor States since I was in jr. high. I used to have whole clattering herds of lead miniature robots I would direct across my best friend's kitchen table to take her mom's orange Lazy Susan from the forces of the evil Capellan Confederation. Between the three of us who played the most we could field 10,000 points worth of the heaviest sort of ordinance and we often pulled them all out. The Federated Commonwealth was my stomping ground, and I walked with the likes of Phelan Kell and Morgan Hasek-Davion. In one memorable campaign I served with the Northwind Highlanders, in another it was Dr. Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers (if you get the reference here, we didn't do it - the game designers did). I grew up, and I had to move my jones for robot combat onto the computer. FASA's Mechwarrior 2 was my first real taste of this, and I loved it. Instead of just imagining the heavy thump of my Nova's tread across the battlefield, I could hear it. I could sit there in the Mech Lab and tweak loadouts and chassis and engines and armor to my heart's content. Looking back I still remember parts of the game. The way my heart jumped on Twycross when that Rifleman powered up across the crater just when you thought you'd got that last Falcon turret. I destroyed the terraformer on that moon four times before I figured out how to do it without getting caught in the resulting explosion. Mechwarrior 3 brought more big robot goodness. I jiggled impatiently all through 1999 and 2000 waiting for Mechwarrior 4, and I was not disappointed. Some things had been limited in the tweaking, but the gains in graphics and in variety made up for it. That and Mercenaries got me through the next year. The kids and I went through two Sidewinder joysticks - the twist joints and the triggers went out in them I played so much. And after the Machiavellian mangling of the game's story, I was ready to get in there and get things straightened out again with Mechwarrior 5. With the success of the two previous installments, it never occurred to me that they would cancel the project. I was furious. It wasn't my last game on the PC or anything. There was no dramatic fist-shaking sort of moments. But as PC games went forward, I just didn't try so hard to keep up with them. And then a lot of other stuff got in the way. I think the last game I purposely bought for the PC was Lionhead's "Black and White". The advent of the Xbox and the PS2 consoles put that last nail into the coffin lid. I sort of understand their decision if I think back to the situation then. No one would have ever imagined that a game would sell with the sorts of system requirements that are standard now. And that was where they were headed with the feature set they were planning. But now that's old hat. Big robot models run a whole heck of a lot lighter than the facial animations we're seeing in Oblivion and Fight Night 3. And in the PC realm, they've got even more room to work. FASA's next outing in that realm was MechAssault for the Xbox. I enjoyed it somewhat, but I was appalled at the way they had dumbed down the story and don't even get me started on what they did to the Mechs themselves. If I find a way to hogtie my brain and leave it at the door it's a pretty good game for what it's intended to be. Especially the multi-player. But with twenty years of game history and one of the best simulation systems ever designed overshadowing it, there's just no way for me to take it seriously. The kids like it but I don't think I've ever replayed it. It's happening all over the game industry. The old simulation games are going by the wayside. It used to be that things added features and complexity as they progressed. Instead, games are dumbing down. I understand that it's to allow a more mainstream demographic. But the problem with that is the very things that made these games the engrossing experience they were before are being lost. And then they wonder why it doesn't sell. I say bring it back. It's not like they couldn't do it. I loaded up my copy of Mechwarrior 4 on the kid's machine, just for old-time's sake. It has aged surprisingly well. Mechwarrior 4 ran on a 300 Mhz CPU, with 64 MB RAM and an 8 MB video card. If FASA insists on sticking with the move into consoles, my Xbox 360 kicks that to the curb. With the USB ports, a real joystick wouldn't be a hard thing to hook up. People are already hooking keyboards and mice and arcade controllers to it. That wouldn't be the best thing, though. If they really wanted to make me and a bunch of other fans who have been sublimating with those collectable miniatures Wizkids has been coming out with very very happy they would go for it and haul MechWarrior 5 out of mothballs and kick this pig. If they brought the PC hardware specs up there with Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 they'd have all the room they would need to make a fan-geek's dream. That's what it would take to bring me back into the PC realm right now with all the obstacles I have in front of me. For a real MechWarrior game to come out, with a chance to make things right again with the story. It's in FASA's court. Let me know it's in development, and I'll start saving for the hardware.
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