MechWarrior: Living Legends

When A Mod is on version 0.3, you've got to be a bit lenient when it comes to reviewing it. But even in this natal stage Mechwarrior: Living Legends doesn't need a easy ride.

Despite still being deep in beta, this total conversion looks gorgeous and is pant-wettingly exciting for fans of stompy war robots. Even those who aren't keen on on giant robots will admire this mod's excellence. A task made easier by the pleasing visuals of the CryEngine 2.

Each map you'll play on (and there are a substantial number of people playing this online already) is huge. As with all Crytek stuff, frame rates on lesser systems are an issue, especially when you jump into aircraft and zoom up above the level.

If your PC can handle it though, the environments are (mostly) things of great beauty. The mechs are convincing when moving about, and when the two forces meet and their rockets start flying, the battle atmosphere is superb. Rocket smoke trails litter the sky lasers sear into metal, and infantry units bob about in their jetpacks.

There's a whole class system going on when it comes to infantry, and here is where the first brick wall is hit. There are places where you can access buy menus which give custom class sets with modifiable weapon load-outs and things like that. But these are all hidden away. There awe little signposts in spawn areas, but I didn't actually spot them until the second map I played. And even then, how to use the menu and the options available didn't make sense or were too vague.

Once you get to grips with these menus, they offer loads of mechs, vehicles and weapons to play with. But unless you get help from an experienced player, they makes for a painful initiation to the game. Fortunately, most of the players I encountered were willing to help out, telling me what a Tagger was, and how infantry soldiers can use it to become more effective team players, and so on.

Living Legends is also buggy, though we didn't experience anything major (something of a compliment to the developers, given the early stage this mod is in). It crashed to desktop when the Steam overlay was used, but some polished games don't like that, so it's not much to grumble about. However, other players have been irked by CTDs, so just be aware.

Living Legends is impenetrable in places and has a few technical issues, but for a new mod that is still heavily in the beta stage, this is a really good show from the developers. Meeh fans will be in heaven, while non-fans should be tempted to give it a whirl. Just be prepared for a steep learning curve.