Graphics
Graphics are quite good, although compared to the Outer Worlds lack some depth. Comparing these 2 releases in graphics quality is a good benchmark given their close release windows and sci-fi nature. Nothing near Red Dead Redemption 2 quality.
Stability is better than mechwarrior online in beta, but lacks some refinement for a game 14 days from release. 120 aspect ratio in 3rd person delivers a fun and somewhat pigeon eyed perspective.
Compared to MWO with reshade and maxed user.cfg tweaks the graphics are somewhat subpar. Compared to stock MWO maxed graphics they are about the same, better in clarity. Reshade can pump mech5 quite nicely the potential is here.
Visual Effects
PPC’s are extremely satisfying in every aspect, the splash effect, the shot, etc, they are great and I prefer them slightly to the MWO PPC.
Gauss rifles have wonderful effects. Lasers are ok, but not as nice as MWO. LBX/bullets are fun, LRM’s lack any luster compared to mechwarrior 2/3, they look ok.
Explosions are nice, as are mech explosions, with a nice delay to make them fun stackpoles.
A lot of cool visual stuff happens with destruction, helicopters falling from the sky, etc.
Sound Effects
MWO nailed sound effects. Mechwarrior 5 fails at sound effects. Some weapons have decent sound. Bitching Betty is…dead? WHY?!
Controls – Mouse – Joystick – Gamepad
Mouse – Controls are acceptable. The line is missing between arms and torso, which is ok, but this also costs the torso reticule dot, which makes aiming slightly harder.
There is no slider for aim sensitivity on zoom, and as such your forced to dpi switch or constantly zoom in/out to change sensitivity. each level of zoom in lowers sensitivity, which helps aim, but drops any ability to move the mechs torso or arms while zoomed in, so a spastic zooming minigame begins. This looks to be a nod to gamepad users.
Artificial Intelligence
As many have noted, subpar. However, given some time with the game, and future patches, I think itll be acceptable. Part of the issue here is that we need less partisan tanks and more unique and varied lance spawns, i’d rather see less stuff on the field and more tonnage than the swarms we get now.
Destruction
Destruction of buildings and cities is great fun. Doesn’t really get old, and it makes the mechs feel great. Everything should be destructible and this hurts when skyscrappers won’t come down, but is hopefully something fixable. I’d love to see this in MWO to get the locust building peeking. (and half the time im the locust lol)
Unfortunately, PGI was unable to bring in mech on mech collisions or Death from Above. Jumpjets are not very steerable either, making this manuever a mech4 relic that we will have to continue to pine over for now. This of course does detract from a complete experience, and is disappointing.
The Battlemechs
Mechs themselves are wonderful, as are the models. While they feel good, fast mechs feel kinda “slow” here and there. OVerall though I’m pleased with mech “Feeling”
The cockpit/HUD/UI
The cockpit HUD is an abomination. After digging through the pak files, I’ve found the alpha/beta footage HUD, and am completely mystified as to why this last minute change was made. Assumptive it favours 3rd person, which is often cited to make the game more “approachable. Hopefully PGI will give us an option to access/use the old HUD or to create HUD mods.
The white colour is terrible. it’s as if the entire team at PGI forgot or doesn’t know what makes a good HUD for any FPS. I’ve worked on 8 HUD’s in the past 20 years, and i’m mortified at the release HUD we received. Whoever made this final decision should be banned from ever making a HUD again.
MWO wins the HUD battle and in cockpit experience hands down. Any debate is simply settled by booting up each game and dropping once, mech5 can’t hold a candle to the MWO experience. This is a major disappointment given the quality, time effort of the MWO experience and how many people enjoyed this, and that no consideration was given to the fans on this point – again – a move that shows exactly why some people are disenchanted with the PGI experience.
The mechlab/HUD/ui
No way to discern what size hardpoints will be except guessing off the stock loadout. No way to sort mechs by tonnage instead of chassis name makes finding a tonnage to fill say a 270 ton mission becomes slightly annoying, really annoying if your not a Battletech pro. Which again runs counter to the dumbing down of other areas like a 3rd person friendly FPS/Arcade cockpit HUD. Basically the stats sheet from MWO is missing, and even just choosing a mech for a mission is a huge pain when you have lots of mechs if you can’t remember what size hardpoints are. It’ll confuse newcomers even more. Also missing is proper weapon information. For an alpha this is acceptable. For release, it’s weak given all this work has already been done in MWO.
Customization/Mechlab
Is ok. As a stock mech fan, I don’t mind, but the mechlab here is far more limiting than Mech4 even, and I’d have preferred that model to give variants somewhat more variety.
Simulation & Gameplay Rating
Ingame audio is severly lacking. In MWO you can orient when targets get sensored. In MW5, you suddenly find 12 things shooting you and you need to watch the ill placed minimap to orient clearly.
Graphics do their job well enough, and the game feels a lot like Battletech 3025 which I really like. Sounds are worse, but otherwise mechs do feel better.
The lack of freelook attached to the 6 dots that make the freelook of MWO and a seeming lock of freelook to the arm reticule lowers immersion.
Gameplay feel is very Btech 3025 and even Jumpjets remind me of 3025 somewhat. Sadly DFA, knockdowns etc are missing, which in a multiplayer title is understandable, but here is probably due to brain dead companion ai and enemy ai leading to ridiculous results when they run into each other over and over. Sadly this means that while you can roll through buildings gloriously, you can NOT step on a flea with an Annihilator or do anything useful when your weapons are gone.
Stability
For me stability has to date been great, with only 1 crash in closed beta and multiplayer.
Note Summary
Feels like a clay pigeon shooter. I think the mechwarrior 2 missions where you had cadet training shooting floating balls where more challenging that shooting enemies in MW5 that actually shoot back. 7 years of MWO PvP makes the ai doomed to fail no matter how good it is. PGI shows they’ve learned some lessons, but still disappoint to some degree due to questionable failures that where easily averted.
Overall we rate this game a 7/10. Every aspect could be better delivered. Bannerlord stands miles above this game as a beta, and the outer worlds stands miles above in polish.
Questionable decisions and resource deployments that involve the cockpit HUD and sounds where pre-existing resources are clearly far superior, combined with failures on ai and story telling leave the game being an acceptable entry into the mechwarrior franchise.
There is a decent framework here, missing some key mech features like DFA/collisions I doubt modders can add. If PGI opens up everything to modders we may end with a reasonably good experience.