Doomguy Plays : Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance

"The year is 3063. The Clan invasion has ended.
You return to your homeworld a hero, only to face
chaos. Your family has been murdered, your
throne seized and now your planet is in the
throes of civil war. It is time to reclaim what is
yours. You will know vengeance. Your enemies
will know terror"

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The excerpt on the back of the CD case for the excellent mech simulation series. This is the base game, Vengeance. Later on I'll probably do Mercenaries (I have been contemplating Mechcommander 2 for a while also) but for now I would like to relive the campaign for one of my favorite games.

I have already done Mechwarrior 3 so I have experience with the series. Although admittedly I have forgotten a lot of the lore. That's not important though, the games themselves focus primarily on the gameplay and customization of your mechs so let's get started.

I'll be using my trusty old joystick (man these things collect dust!) and hopefully I won't run into any problems with the game (or the stick, the center is slightly off...). Mech3 gets weird with modern computers. Next post coming soon!

Installing game now...


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EDIT:
Darnit come on start. I'm getting that vague "program has stopped working" message when trying to start the game. Looking everywhere and I see nothing. I won't give up yet though, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. If worst comes to worse I put it in that Win XP VM mode that you can download as a Windows 7 user. Tried it before, worked very well but I hate jumping through hoops like that.

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EDIT 2:
It WORKED!
Sort of. Okay this is one of the strangest things I have ever seen on making an old game work on my computer. See I own the original game box and the two CD's that make up the game (You need disk 2 inside to make the game run).

Recently Mektech with Microsoft's blessing released Mech4 with it's expansion and standalone game mercenaries for free. This no longer stands since Mektech doesn't exist anymore. The whole situation is in legal limbo. I own the original CD's of the game anyway so this doesn't matter to me. The only difference between my version and the recently released "digital version" was that they, Mektech, messed around with the .exe file to run the game without a CD. Only now it's impossible to find that version. Also their .exe only works for their version of the game so it's not like I could copy it over my physical edition.

Follow me? Don't worry it's get's more strange.

This shouldn't matter since I own the CD but the game didn't start up. No patch version made this game run. So I contemplated a few options. Either I hunt down that mektech version (which is no guarantee that Vengeance will work) or run the game in Virtual Emulation (VM). I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and with a little effort I can run a 1998 Windows 95 game over 1000fps if I really wanted to.
I didn't want to go trough the hoops setting that up so instead I hunted down for one of those "nocd" patches from pre digital free version. This is almost impossible to do with a game that is already considered "free". The mektech version of the game is lost somewhere on the internet and it seems to focus more on Mercenaries then Vengeance.

I eventually found a pre digital version "nocd" patch on some random Russian site. I had to download a separate program to extract it (first time 7zip ever failed me. Apparently it's purposely done with regards to the format in question)

So I patched it over the game's .exe file (back it up of course) and the game starting loading up until...
Please insert disk 2
Lol a nocd patch that still needs the disk. So it doesn't work right? HOWEVER! This is actually FURTHER then what was happening before. Whenever I tried to run the game without a CD before doing any of this the game crashed immediatly. This time it's telling me to insert a disk. After I insert my legal game disk guess what? The game loads up! In English thankfully.

How's that for bizarre? It took a non working Russian nocd patch for Mechwarriors 4 to make my legal game working on my computer.

What an interesting trip.

 

It begins.

Training Mission

Spoiler

Wait what? Hey I needed a warm up on the controls. I wasn't sure if the joystick was working so I had to give it a go.

One of the hard things to do in this game is learning how to twist your mechs torso. It lets you run in one direction while looking at the other. The better you are at this the harder it is to get hit. For the first time I'm going to play this game in the hardest difficulty setting. It's going to take everything I know to get avoid getting blasted by some of the most dangerous weapons in this game.

Towards the ending of the "training" a prisoner breaks out and hijacks a mech. This is not a drill!

Yeah he didn't last very long. Laughable he got stuck on the gaurd tower I made him pay. Better screenshots are on the way

Operation 1 Mission 1

Spoiler

A walk in the park level. Before heading out I make a few tweaks in the mechlab. I'll be spending a lot of time here later on.


I paint my mech purple and remove the jump jets. Jump jets are fun and let you do big jumps around levels but I find them impractical more often then not. I increase my mech's speed and install anti missile countermeasures (LAMs) instead. Two for the price of one.

There are many vehicles in this level and all of them shoot at you. However since you are in a 45 ton mech they only scratch you even on elite difficulty. I destroy all resistance easily and destroy the comm towers.



Easy peasy

Op1 Mission 2

Spoiler

Alright something more challanging. Before the mission they play a video log with what is imo pretty good acting.

Every mission has a few. Sometimes one triggers after you listen to them all and then you click on the mission. Anyone that has played this game before knows what I mean (You're about to click launch and then someone jumps in for one last video)

Nothing to change with the mech here. After every mission you get salvage but this early it's garbage essentialy.

Nice paintjob. This mission I'm teamed up with Jules Gonzalez (previous was Casey Nolen). They all have their personalities. I have to destroy some scud launchers but they have some escorts.




As you can see my "health" on the last screenshot is in the red. There is only a few ways you can get blown up in this game. Either your cockpit gets shot up (this is incredibility rare), one of your legs gets shot off (rare, the legs are the most armored part), your rear armor gets blown up (never show your rear to the enemy) or your center torso takes too much damage. Not the left or right torso! If any of those sides gets shot off then you lose your weapons and arm on that side but not the center torso. Use this to shield your vulnarable middle torso as an advance tactic. Incoming missles can be blocked by twisting your mech in a way so your most healthy side eats all the shots. This will save you down the line. I should have used my teammate to meatsheild for me. In this game your team is really useful, just send them out in front of you and the a.i will focus their attention on them instead of you. At least for a little while.

[/spoiler]

 

Jesus. What a mess. I haven't tried MW4: Vengeance on my new system, yet. But I didn't have any trouble running it on my Windows 8 PC. I also have the original disc version.

I miss the free Mektek download of Mercenaries. It made a few changes and added a few new mechs.

Looking through your LP is making me want to dust off the old joystick and fire up my copy of MW4, again.

 

The things I do to make things run

Op1 Mission 3

Spoiler

The dropship level! This one can get completely out of hand if you screw around too long. So Steiner (the guys who took over our homeworld) use these dropships to move their troops around. They are keeping it on this moon to keep them "safe". If we destroy them the enemy will have a really hard time countering our resistance.

Before heading out I change the time of attack to night.


Spooky. So aside from obviously being darker night battles apparently have an effect on heat build up. Night time is cooler and all that. I don't know if it does for real in this game, I'm only going on what I either read in the manual or someone ingame said it. In any case it seems to make sense attacking at night in this situation. The three dropships need to be destroyed quickly. First start by destroying the three vehicles that are trying to start it up. It is nearly impossible to destroy a fully functional dropship when it's powered on.
Trust me I tried it in a 100 ton assault mech. They are mounted with four Large Lasers and four Guess Cannons (or was that PPCs?). Just don't. Destroy everything around the dropships and then shoot at their engines until they go boom. Don't waste time trying to damage the landing platform.




There's two mechs in this level and lots of flashing lights and lasers in the darkness. Frantic level, probably the best one in this operation.

Op2 Mission 4

Spoiler

Now that the enemy dropships are destroyed we are cleared to begin our resistance on our homeplanet. Intercepted communications (we got the codes from the first mission) tell us the enemy may not get along so well with each other. We can exploit this. Regardless it sounds like they are getting curious on the lack of information going on the moon so they are sending a lance of mechs to investigate. This mission we have to defend our own dropships while they prepare to escape. I prepare myself accordignly.


I strip out the two machineguns and replace it with some good old regular "medium lasers". I never do the ER version for the med lasers since the extra heat build up isn't worth it (but always do it for small and large!)
For some bizarre reason the machineguns weight two tons and barely do any damage. A regular medium laser is a whole lot better I think. Unlike Mechwarrior 3 where machineguns could be used with better effect in this game they seemed to have been nerfed. I know it's an array of machineguns (three or four) but they seem to be really weak.

Anyway since I saved a lot of space I was able to also add some short range missiles.



There are three armor types Ferro Fiborous (something like that), Reactive, and Reflective. Ferro is base armor and works against everything, Reactive is good against ballistic weapons and Reflective against beams.

Since I'm fighting primarily light mechs whose biggest weapons are usually lasers I put on reflective armor. I don't remember if reactive is good against missiles.


I must defend these! So as i said earlier I'm playing on elite difficulty which is the hardest. This is what they do on elite difficulty on this level.


Enemy Shadowcat pilot : "WHO CARES ABOUT THE GUY SHOOTING ME! I'M DOING MY OBJECTIVE!"


Enemy Shadowcat pilot : "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! OH LOOK AN ENEMY MECH IS SHOOTING ME!"
Me : "Wtf stop doing your mission and fight me!"

No seroiusly these guys zerged rushed the dropships. I wish I took the screenshot of the enemy Hellspawn mech trying to ram my dropship. I couldn't believe the change in their behavior. Then I realized that somehow my teammate got completely wrecked within the opening minute of this level.
Well the mission to protect the APUs is optional. In the end you have to destroy all enemy units and I do so. End of operation 1

 

I didn't forget about this. I'm trying to set up a video playthrough together with screenshots and writing. It will be glorious. That means I'll have to start over but I'm not too far into the playthough yet.