Mech Commander

The Good
I like Mech games, and an RTS game with Mechs sounds pretty darned good to me! There's huge potential in this concept.

The Bad
Everything else.

Mech Commander really isn't an RTS game at all. RTS implies a degree of tactical and strateigc freedom to find solutions to problems; in Mech Commander, levesl are designed so that there's only one way to win, and you pretty much just keep playing until you can solve the puzzle. The puzzle-like gameplay is supremely frustrating and just completely unsuited to the whole concept; if I wanted to solve puzzles I'd buy a puzzle game. It doesn't help that, like most Mechwarrior games, the game comes with one linear campaign with a backstory about as exciting as double-entry bookkeeping. I'll be darned if I can understand why the Battletech line of games is so cursed with the "let's give 'em nothing but one lousy campaign to play, and let's make sure it's boring!" mentality.

There is no real impact in Mech design; if you have a bigger mech, you'll beat a smaller one.

The Bottom Line
Worth playing around with if you can borrow a copy. I hope the sequel's better.