I don't know how many BattleTech novelizations you have on your shelf, but, well. I have enough to scare away potential wives. And enough to know that despite urban mech combat being a fixture of the fiction, that we haven't had proper mech-on-mech city warfare in a MechWarrior game since the franchise's inception.
That'll change, thank goodness. Armed with CryEngine, Piranha Games just pushed out a trailer showing River City, a happy little 31st century suburb you'll be fighting over. This is good news--the maps so far shown in MechWarrior Online (still in closed beta) have been variously open-ground: tundra, volcanic desert, or lakey forest. A cluttered map with streets, bridges, and rooftops should pave the way for new tactics. I'm going to march my Hunchback right up to city hall and give them a piece of my mind. Is there a city hall?
Evan's a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer way back in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are Hunt: Showdown, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Counter-Strike. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle's basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging.
