Quote Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae
MW4 did, indeed, have a plot, which ties into the BattleTech universe. Unfortunately, it was marred by bad acting. MW4: Mercenaries was VASTLY superior to MW4 in every way. No lame Live Action videos, and an open-ended game. Plus I love how you can take a Jade Falcon Nova Commander as a bondsman. Much love to the Clanners.
The bad acting is what I was referring to. The "campaign" was also very restrictive and annoying. I much preferred the campaign in MW2 as either Wolf or Jade Falcon. The IS did not come into MW2 at all, it was purely clan. The landscapes were haunting looking, bleak moons and isolated bases. The missions were straighrforward and without the annoying scripted sequences. There was no resource management or salvage involved, this is what imho marred MW2: Mercenaries which, despite a massive range of chassis and weapons, was flawed in many other respects (CTDs). All of the usual suspects were present in MW2, the Hellbringers (lokis), Summoners (Thors), Direwolves (Daishi), Kit Foxes (Uller), Timberwolves (Madcats) etc. The main differences were the lasers, they were star wars style rather than true laser style, and the graphics. The PPCs were also quite funny in that they're like two large low velocity fuzzy silver balls, and the gauss projectile is like one smaller polished silver ball that breaks up feebily when it hits the target. The damage these weapons do is worth the compensation however. The same heat management exists, as does the weapon grouping alpha strikes and mech bay for customizing the weapons load. You could place anything inside a mech in any position, which was somewhat unrealistic, but added to the flexibility alot. The interface was much more intuitive than the MW4 one. If you can pick up the MW2 3dfx Interactive Edition on ebay, it's definitely worth it. To run it on a modern graphics card though you'll need a Glide Wrapper program and some luck.

The first Mechcommander game was also a good one.