Accessories

mechwarrior4: Black Knight
it was a good game, i thought the storyline was great, not much had changed in the gameplay from the other two connected with this game.

Changes, Both Good and Bad
<> Mech 4: Black Knight made some nice changes to Vengeance in that it included some new mechs (which all look better than their predecessors), all of which are quite useful (finally, useful light mechs other than the Cougar!) On the negative side, production values for the mission briefings and voice acting (which was not anything to write home about the first time) have gone down. Also, missions vary wildly in difficulty, from being over in minutes (single digits) with hardly a shot fired to being all but impossible until you do enough trial+error runs (I though Mech Commander had the monopoly on those sorts of missions!). Also, the black market system had a lot of work that needed to be done on it, which fortunately would show up in Mercenaries, a very good sequal to MW IV. The most annoying thing Black Knight really does though is in its story. It does one of the worst carry-over jobs I've ever seen in a sequel. While Diablo II pulled off the "Hero gone bad" relatively well, this game just starts off with "All those people you worked hard to beat the previous game with, including yourself, are now psychopathic genocidal murderers. Aren't you glad you worked to beat the last game the harder, good way?" Games like KOTOR II approach sequels right, by having a storyline of its own, but allowing the player to update what occurred previously based on how they beat the first game! This does not seem too difficult, but I hardly ever see it. Pretty much, the story ruined a lot of the game for me, which is a shame because the mercenary idea and mechs seemed great.

Mags, Angel, Shredder...!!! HEEELLLLPPP !!!!!
Okay, there's nothing wrong with a challenge. But I'm just selfish and unsporting enough that I don't want a tie when I lock up with the enemy-- I want to bring enough force to bear on them to overwhelm them. And that is the weakness of Black Knight-- mission after mission. You can't. On most of the missions, you ought to have two lances or more, but you will have to cross your fingers and try to beat the four to one odds with your one lance and on again, off again lancemates. Perhaps Mechwarrior: Mercenaries spoiled me badly, but I was too busy cursing like a werewolf for most of the missions in Black Knight at the lousy odds and even worse mission profiles to enjoy any of it. Now, if they had let me import my gear and lances from Mercenaries to this one.... that would have been different. To #@%%% with the Legion, Spectre Lance rules.

Fun and challenging... VERY challenging
Back in ... oh, maybe 1996, my dad got me a joystick for my computer, and MechWarrior 2 came with it. I've been hooked to the games ever since. I haven't played this expansion pack in a while, but I know that I love this game. The Amazon description is dead-on. The old characters from MechWarrior 4 were so annoying that hunting them down was a blast. The black market was very useful, too. The only problem was that it was all so hard! I consider myself to be quite a good pilot, but I had to be flawless to make it through each level. When I got to the last level, I thought it might take me a week to beat it. Wrong. I had my bad-a** set of assault mechs, but getting hit with about a million enemy assault mechs humbled me greatly. I still have yet to beat that last level... anways, I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes firing gigantic weaponry and causing huge explosions everywhere. Also, I've found its a great game to play when you are in a bad mood and just need to waste something.

cool improvements
the new stuff on Black Knights definitely improves on MW4 Vengeance. for one, the campaign is quite a bit better--you're not some little teenager fighting against the "bad guys", you're a Legion of professional mechwarriors who are ready to blow the brains out of anyone at moment's notice. It's really strange though--you set out to kill the character you played as in Vengeance, and all his friends, and all the people that worked for Ian come and join you. Funny.
The grand total of five new mechs didn't completely blow me away. Most of them are light and medium mechs, but there's a heavy and an assault. my personal opinions on them:
Uller--hey, finally a Mech that can go faster than an Osiris, but other than that it stinks, pretty much
Ryoken--it's big, but the weapons just.....don't appease me.
Wolfhound--a joke
Black Knight--good if you give it the right weapons
Sunder--hey, this Mech isn't all that bad. Good weapons. An assault mech
now the weapons.........I dunno. There's new versions of the Autocannon--the AC 10 and AC 20. X-Pulse Lasers are definitely better than normal Pulse lasers. Cluster bombs...ohhh boy. think Long Toms, but faster reloading, and stronger, and four at a time. That's cluster bomb for you