BattleTech

Hulking heavy metal takes a lesson from XCOM

- Ian Evenden

THE MECHWARRIOR GAMES—first-person, real-time explorations of driving a massive walking tank—feel like a long time ago, and BattleTech isn’t a MechWarrior game. It’s from the same universe, however, an adaptation of the 1984 board game that started it all, which has come via XCOM. You get the feuding interstellar empires and massive walking tanks, but it’s all played from above, as a turn-based strategy game.

Following a coup in which a queen is deposed, you find yourself and your mech attached to a mercenary company; you work your passage on its mech carrier to pay off debts and avenge your former ruler. As leader of a lance of up to four mechs, which can be customized and swapped, depending on what you can scavenge or afford, you’ve got the firepower to make a difference, assuming you can use it right.