MechWarrior 5: Clans review

MechWarrior 5: Clans kind of had me on the back foot from the off. Not being a longstanding fan of the series (I played Mercenaries a few years ago), I didn’t go in with a tacit understanding of who anybody is or why they’re shooting each other in giant mechs. And to be honest, shooting anything in a giant mech is usually all the context I need. But Clans goes to great pains to bring its world to life, with lofty speeches given in cavernous hangars in the shadow of colossal fighting machines. It has its own language that hints at decades of history and conflict, as outcast clans of humans battle against those who cast them out. It’s a lot to take in for the uninitiated.

And if I’m butchering the plot that’s because it isn’t really all that friendly to newcomers. Perhaps after multiple games and spin-offs, a certain amount of assumed knowledge is fair, but they could at least give us a “previously on…” sequence. What I do understand is that humanity has simultaneously evolved to the point of battling across multiple planets with gargantuan robots and fleets of thousands, and also regressed to an almost tribal social structure. You play as Kit Jayden (Kit being a rank as opposed to your name) of Clan Smoke Jaguar, are named Star Commander of a squad of five MechWarriors, and immediately recruited to work for the higher ups of your Clan.

Ultimately, though, what really matters is the mech-fighting. Purists and veterans alike will probably switch the controls to “classic” mode, which necessitates controlling the mech like an actual walking tank, moving parts individually and feeling more like a pilot. For everyone else there’s a modern mode, which makes it feel like a normal first or third person shooter, depending on your preferred point of view. Missions take the form of engagements with multiple objectives, usually book-ended by another high quality cutscene.

But here’s where my biggest issue with MechWarrior 5: Clans lies. The cutscenes may look lovely, but they don’t always run well. In fact, the game itself has performance issues. And while my PC isn’t top of the range, I’ve run games like Wukong this year with zero issues. In MechWarrior 5 I struggled to find a smooth setup, suffering texture pop, slowdown, dropped frames and stuttering. Even on the lowest settings it wouldn’t run smoothly, and the more action-intensive cutscenes just completely crapped out, skipping and pausing throughout. This extended to the gameplay, which just wasn’t a smooth experience.

So much seemed to have been put into the cutscene animations, uncanny valley lip-synching and a ton of eyebrow acting, which maybe could have been spent on ironing out some of the kinks elsewhere.

As for the gameplay itself, well, it’s serviceable. Fans of the franchise my lap it up, obviously, but the shooting is just okay and the environments don’t do anything special. Minute to minute action, boosting your mech around and rotating through your frankly irresponsible arsenal, is good fun, but it’s marred by the performance at every turn. The story also suffers from some weird direction, with major events happening off-screen and a lot of background chatter during missions that you can easily miss while trying to concentrate.

Mech customisation plays a big part though. As mentioned there are tons of weapons and modules to unlock, cosmetic tweaks, paint jobs, decals, and multiple parts to improve things like speed, weapon cooldown, ammo count, and survivability. Multiple mech archetypes come with different stats and default loadouts, allowing you to develop the rig you want with pretty minimum fuss. As you can often switch to directly control your teammates in the thick of battle, these diverse builds give you lots of options in a fight.

Despite some iffy performance and a lot of proper nouns that I just couldn’t track properly, I enjoyed my time with MechWarrior 5: Clans, which is testament to the fact that Piranha Games have put a great deal of love and effort into this game. Not everything works and it certainly caters heavily to the fans, but MechWarrior 5: Clans is still a decent mech shooter with a lot of customisation and some solid set pieces.