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MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat stomped onto the PC gaming scene in the mid-nineties, bringing complex first-person combat that was as much about deftly piloting the series’ multi-ton walking tanks called mechs as it was about reflexes. Location-based damage and operational controls that let players rotate their mechs’ torsos independently of their legs were just a couple of attributes that set MechWarrior apart from other combat sims. The game also saw several versions that helped bridge the gap between DOS and 3D accelerated video cards, including some versions made and bundled specifically for certain video cards by a variety of their manufacturers. It also eventually made its way onto the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Mac.

Today we add 1995’s classic first-person combat simulation, MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

For many gamers, MechWarrior 2 was the first in the series to really capture the imagination. MobyGames reviewer Paul Budd enthusiastically describes how the game made him a MechWarrior convert. “I was never a big fan of the original Mechwarrior game. That said, I really tried to go into this game with a clear head,” he states. “This was one of the best gaming investments I ever made! This game is full of action, cool music and sounds–and you get to pilot enormous Mechs! The broad array of terrain-types and combat scenarios will give you many hours of slammin’-jammin’ gaming goodness.”

MobyGames Reviewer Ashley Pomeroy touts the game’s presentational attributes, which continued to evolve with each subsequent expansion and sequel. “The impression of moving about in a giant robot was extremely well conveyed,” Pomeroy states. “Your robot strode around the landscape exactly as if it was a hundred feet tall and made of iron. The sound design was effective as well, with a good range of clanks and robot noises that added greatly to the experience.”

She also touches on MechWarrior 2’s RPG-like customization options. “One of the best features was the way that you could customize your robot, indeed you could choose several different robot bodies. Each could store a certain weight of weapons and equipment in a certain set of locations, and if you overloaded your robot it moved slower, heated up quicker, and couldn’t jump as far,” she explains.

Tell Us Your Stories! We want to hear about your experiences with MechWarrior 2. Tell us your stories. Why did you love it? What drove you crazy? Remember it fondly with us in the comments below. We’ll select some of your thoughts and memories and add it to a Weekend Update to this feature.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat on MobyGames.com

You are the genetically engineered Clan Mechwarrior. The Clans are invading the Inner Sphere. Join either the Wolf Clan or the Jade Falcon Clan as they pursue their own agenda against the Inner Sphere and other Clans. Take your advanced Omnimechs into battle against all comers. Win high warrior ratings (by using less mechs or smaller mechs than needed, completing secondary objectives, etc.) and you’ll get chance at a promotion trial where you face superior odds in an arena. If you win, you advance in rank. If you are very successfully, you can make it all the way up to Khan, leader of the Clan!

Mechwarrior II was developed in-house by Activision as the successor to their original Mechwarrior. While this time there are no dynamic campaign and mercenary actions, the Clan culture is integrated into the two campaigns. Different clans have different mechs and different rules, even different weapons. You can customize your mechs in order to use less than the “par” force in order to get a higher rating. The full 3D environment wasn’t pretty, as this was before the 3D accelerators made their debut, but it’s still better than anything that came before. The addition of NetMech allowed users to fight each other online. When 3D cards came along, special versions were created to take advantage of 3D texturing. While not QUITE as replayable as Mechwarrior, it’s nonetheless a classic.

MobyGames Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

On Wednesday we announced 1993’s cyberpunk RTS title Syndicate was the next addition our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Syndicate garnered a lot of respect among gamers and critics alike when it was released in 1993, thanks to its blend of deep strategic choices and real-time tactical combat. Similar in many ways to X-Com: UFO Defense, players of Syndicate could customize their squads in an RPG-like fashion, using the money they earned on missions to upgrade their agents, tools, and equipment. Syndicate presented players a memorable world: a vision of a dark future, in which all-out corporate warfare was the norm.

Shacknews user Sideways Bob recounts his first exposure to Syndicate during a pen-and-paper session of Shadowrun back in 1994, and notes how impressed he was by the level of interactive destruction that Syndicate afforded. “The GM was showing us the flame thrower and I remarked that it’d be cool if you could blow up a car with it,” he states. “One happened to be driving by, so he took a shot at it and a moment later it exploded. The lot of us were NES/SNES guys, and used the fairly linear gameplay and many non-interactive environments, so this was something of a surprise to us.”

He goes on to mention the PS1 spin-off Syndicate Wars, and his ongoing search for a PS1 mouse. “A few years later I had a PS1, saw Syndicate Wars for sale and, remembering that afternoon, bought it. It seemed to hit all the right notes, but the interface was just way too cumbersome for a gamepad. To this day I’m trying to find the PS1 mouse so I can play it properly.”

Shacknews user prsgame also makes note of Syndicate’s tone, which was refreshingly mature for its time. “I loved the rocket launcher or Gauss gun,” he writes. “It was a game with a moral compass as sending a rocket down was met with screams and destruction. Powerful stuff for the time.”

Check out the original Chatty thread for more stories and memories from Chrono Trigger.

Syndicate on MobyGames.com

In the future, the world is controlled by a handful of global corporations (syndicates). You are the Marketing director (hit man) for one of these companies. It is your job to take control away from the competitors. The job is not one of diplomacy, but one of brute force and physical control. Advance your way to the top of the corporation by successfully completing your missions and managing the money you make from your territories.

The gameplay is visually reminiscent of X-Com, with an angled top-down perspective, but it is real time rather than turn based. You have missions ranging from infiltrate and capture, to seek and destroy. In each of these you direct a team of four agents as they move through the world shooting at anything that gets in their way.

You can upgrade and modify your agents, as well as equip them with tools you have researched or liberated from opposing syndicates. As you complete missions, you gain more funds to use for purchasing agents or researching upgrades and equipment.

MobyGames Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Syndicate garnered a lot of respect among gamers and critics alike when it was released in 1993, thanks to its blend of deep strategic choices and real-time tactical combat. Similar in many ways to X-Com: UFO Defense, players of Syndicate could customize their squads in an RPG-like fashion, using the money they earned on missions to upgrade their agents, tools, and equipment. Syndicate presented players a memorable world: a vision of a dark future, in which all-out corporate warfare was the norm.

Today we add 1993’s classic RTS game, Syndicate, to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Syndicate was quite impressive when it was released, providing players with a robust and immersive interface. “As a matter of fact,” says Mobygames reviewer saladpuncher, “I have never seen another control system that makes you feel like you are IN the game as much as this one. Every action is controlled through a holographic computer aboard your luxurious corporate blimp high above the city,” he explains. “This gives a logical reason to why the action is presented from a third person view from above. Selecting your team, arming them, setting up research options, paying for hints from informants, and taxing the local populous are all done though this virtual computer and it really makes you feel like you are using a state-of-the-art OS from Blade Runner or Neuromancer.”

Mobygames reviewer phlux touches on the game’s variety of different mission types, and how they keep the player engaged. “The missions are suspenseful and you really got many different tasks to master. Rescuing some professor, killing the other syndicate’s agent teams or just gathering some innocent people as new recruits are just three of the diverse missions you can encounter,” he explains. “The mission descriptions are always informative and sometimes even downright funny. With the huge arsenal of weapons and other stuff to research, you really have something to do even outside the combat action.”

Tell Us Your Stories! We want to hear about your experiences with Syndicate. Tell us your stories. Why did you love it? What drove you crazy? Remember it fondly with us in the comments below. We’ll select some of your thoughts and memories and add it to a Weekend Update to this feature.

Syndicate on MobyGames.com

In the future, the world is controlled by a handful of global corporations (syndicates). You are the Marketing director (hit man) for one of these companies. It is your job to take control away from the competitors. The job is not one of diplomacy, but one of brute force and physical control. Advance your way to the top of the corporation by successfully completing your missions and managing the money you make from your territories.

The gameplay is visually reminiscent of X-Com, with an angled top-down perspective, but it is real time rather than turn based. You have missions ranging from infiltrate and capture, to seek and destroy. In each of these you direct a team of four agents as they move through the world shooting at anything that gets in their way.

You can upgrade and modify your agents, as well as equip them with tools you have researched or liberated from opposing syndicates. As you complete missions, you gain more funds to use for purchasing agents or researching upgrades and equipment.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Last Wednesday we added 2001’s Max Payne to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Max Payne delighted and surprised many gamers and critics alike when it was released back in 2001 for the PC with its blend of solid 3rd-person shooting and gritty noir-style presentation. The introduction of Bullet Time–which allowed players to slow time to a crawl while dodging and returning enemy fire–was brand new, and quite a huge deal at the time. Comic book-style cut-scenes and some appropriately melodramatic voice-over narration blended with the revenge-themed story to create an experience brimming with as much style as gunplay.

Many of us who loved Max Payne when it first came out played through it multiple times, despite its linear storyline and gameplay. Shacknews user friedram echoes this sentiment, stating, “I really loved this game. My girlfriend (now wife) bought it for me, I must have played through it 5+ times.”

Max Payne’s popularity also spawned some fan-made mods, the best of which was called “Kung Fu 3.0,” which empowered Max with some crazy slow-motion martial artistry. Shacknews user Xulu decried our failure to mention the popular mod in our initial post, which you can see in-action, below.

Shacknews user erdstapa recollects the addictive nature of the gunplay, recollecting how he and some friends played the game into the wee hours of the morning. “Two friends came over with the game to check it out just after the release. We played it until 3 A.M., when two of us dozed off,” he explains. “In the morning, we found my other friend still in front of the PC barely sitting up and desperately clutching the mouse in his hand and whispering ‘Must… play… more…’ That’s how addictive it is!”

Check out the original Chatty thread for more stories and memories from Max Payne.

Max Payne on MobyGames.com

Max Payne was a police officer of the New York City police. On one terrible day, his wife and newborn daughter were killed by three junkies, who broke into his apartment after having ingested a new designer drug known as Valkyr. After the tragedy, Max quit the police force and joined the Drug Enforcement Administration. Three years later, during a raid on a mafia compound that was reportedly trafficking Valkyr, his best friend and fellow DEA agent Alex is killed, and he becomes the prime suspect in his murder. Now Max is all alone in the cold, snowy night of New York. The mob is out to get him. The police are out to get him. The only way out is with guns blazing, because he has nothing to lose.

Max Payne is a third person shooter stylistically influenced by film noir, “hardboiled” detective stories, and Hong-Kong action cinema. Max can perform rolls and leaps to try and dodge enemy fire. The weapons at his disposal range from baseball bats to Ingram sub-machine guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and others. A unique feature of the game is the usage of the so-called Bullet Time - a time-slowing ability that was popularized by the first Matrix movie.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Max Payne delighted and surprised many gamers and critics alike when it was released back in 2001 for the PC with its blend of solid 3rd-person shooting and gritty noir-style presentation. The introduction of Bullet Time–which allowed players to slow time to a crawl while dodging and returning enemy fire–was brand new, and quite a huge deal at the time. Comic book-style cut-scenes and some appropriately melodramatic voice-over narration blended with the revenge-themed story to create an experience brimming with as much style as gunplay.

Today we add 2001’s classic third-person shooter, Max Payne, to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

“The story is told in still screens with comic-book pages on them, which is an original and stylish idea,” notes MobyGames reviewer Unicorn Lynx. “The dialogue, and most of all, Max’s own comments, are well-written and convincingly spoken. An interesting thing is the usage of humor. At first sight, it seems there’s nothing to laugh about here, but the more you advance the story, the more you realize it has a double edge. Its stylistic references to action movies are so obvious that it nearly becomes a self-aware parody.”

Kasey Chang sums the game up quite nicely in his MobyGames review, stating: “Max Payne is about as close as you will come to ‘play’ an action movie. It may be short (but then, so are most action movies), it may be a bit trite and cliche (but then, so are action movies), and it may be over-the-top (again, like action movies) but it sure is fun.”

MobyGames reviewer Kadath Bird also illustrates how the game still holds up quite well, even though gamers who didn’t have a chance to play it when it was new might not immediately appreciate it. “Max Payne was an innovative and unique action title for its time. Sadly, its gameplay draws such as bullet time have been worn and torn so bad that if you describe Max Payne to a modern gamer who missed it first time around, they’ll simply go ‘meh, its been done,’” he explains. Then he qualifies: “Even I (for awhile) was so worn out from games with bullet time and ‘John Woo-style’ gameplay mechanics that I dismissed Max Payne as dated. But a recent playthrough proved to me that this game is just as good as it ever has been.”

Tell Us Your Stories! We want to hear about your experiences with Max Payne. Tell us your stories. Why did you love it? What drove you crazy? Remember it fondly with us in the comments below. We’ll select some of your thoughts and memories and add it to a Weekend Update to this feature.

Max Payne on MobyGames.com

Max Payne was a police officer of the New York City police. On one terrible day, his wife and newborn daughter were killed by three junkies, who broke into his apartment after having ingested a new designer drug known as Valkyr. After the tragedy, Max quit the police force and joined the Drug Enforcement Administration. Three years later, during a raid on a mafia compound that was reportedly trafficking Valkyr, his best friend and fellow DEA agent Alex is killed, and he becomes the prime suspect in his murder. Now Max is all alone in the cold, snowy night of New York. The mob is out to get him. The police are out to get him. The only way out is with guns blazing, because he has nothing to lose.

Max Payne is a third person shooter stylistically influenced by film noir, “hardboiled” detective stories, and Hong-Kong action cinema. Max can perform rolls and leaps to try and dodge enemy fire. The weapons at his disposal range from baseball bats to Ingram sub-machine guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and others. A unique feature of the game is the usage of the so-called Bullet Time - a time-slowing ability that was popularized by the first Matrix movie.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

It took us two weeks to reveal, but the Shacknews Game of the Year awards for 2011 have been laid to rest, with CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings taking the crown.

We didn’t have the time to set up a reader poll for ‘Best of 2011,’ but our community did create their own; naming The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim the Unofficial Shacknews Community GOTY.

After the break is a listing of our ‘Best of 2011′ winners and honorable mentions along with a video presentation featuring the top five.

• Shacknews Game of the Year 2011: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
• ‘Best of’ First Runner-Up: Portal 2
• ‘Best of’ Second Runner-Up: Batman: Arkham City
• ‘Best of’ Third Runner-Up: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• ‘Best of’ Fourth Runner-Up: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Honorable Mention: Bastion
• Honorable Mention: Super Mario 3D Land
• Honorable Mention: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• Honorable Mention: Saints Row: The Third
• Honorable Mention: LittleBigPlanet 2

The Shacknews 2011 Game of the Year awards are based on a weighted scoring system between all staff writers and editors. Read all about how our GOTY voting process worked, here.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings may be draped in the cloak of a brutal fantasy world filled with monsters and magic, but it offers an interesting reflection of real-world problems. It’s a political drama where those in command are governed by fear and uncertainty. It shines light on racism and sexism in ways that shows developer CD Projekt RED is unafraid to push narrative boundaries beyond most games in its class.

Based on the book series from Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher 2 goes worlds beyond the 2007 original title in almost every conceivable way (though there is some contention with the game’s ending). Combat is completely overhauled–and after a few balance tweaks soon after release, it’s satisfying to the point of perfection. The game can be unapologetic in its command for your attention and skill, pushing aside a generation of games marketed to the era of players raised by handholding execution.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was perhaps a game many have missed due to its demanding requirements, but it was (and remains) an adventure of epic scale and scope. It is one of the few games that genuinely offers players a choice. What you do matters, offering players a diverging path that shelves an entire section of the game reserved for choosing another path.

Beyond the joy of slaying monsters and uncovering a major conspiracy as Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher 2 is gorgeous. If your machine can handle it, The Witcher 2 may be the most breathtaking adventure we’ve ever experienced.

Much like any game–even those we regard as classics–The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has a few missteps; though many of its “bugs” have long since been squashed by the game’s developer.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings isn’t vast in the same way that Skyrim is. It is often linear in its overall story, though choices made along the way are important to the tale. Linearity is only troublesome if a game’s vision is as confined as its environments are and The Witcher 2 suffers from no such flaw. It is focused. It’s a wonderful game that you must play (either now on PC or this upcoming May when it arrives on Xbox 360). For these reasons and more, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has proudly been voted as the Shacknews.com 2011 Game of the Year.

The Shacknews 2011 Game of the Year awards are based on a weighted scoring system between all staff writers and editors [here's how it works!]. Last week we revealed our “Honorable Mentions,” which include the titles that did not quite make our overall ‘Top Five Games of the Year.’ Today is our final award, the ‘Shacknews 2011 Game of the Year’ award.

With Portal, Valve took the mechanic of shooting–something we’re very familiar with–and used it in a whole new fashion. Using a gun that opened portals, Valve created a geometry-based puzzle game, the object of which was to use the openings to navigate increasingly challenging test chambers. With that starting point established, Portal 2 hits the ground running.

Portal 2 tricks you into thinking you’d never leave the unfriendly confines of the Aperture Science labs. Then the game blossoms, blowing down the very walls needed for its portals and opens up into a fantastic adventure. Breaking out of the test chambers feels liberating, answering the question: “what could I do with this portal gun in the world outside a test chamber?”

Peeking behind the curtain at Aperture Science offered an intellectual story that fits the puzzling pace just right. It’s fun sci-fi, just campy enough, without becoming so silly it can’t be taken seriously.

The crowning achievement of Portal 2 is its co-op mode. Working with a second player more than just doubled the complexity of the game. Solving a puzzle with a friend offered the same surprising, euphoric feel of the original Portal. For that feeling alone, Portal 2 stands as one of the high points of 2011.

The Shacknews 2011 Game of the Year awards are based on a weighted scoring system between all staff writers and editors [here's how it works!]. Last week we revealed our “Honorable Mentions,” which include the titles that did not quite make our overall ‘Top Five Games of the Year.’ This week we reveal that Top Five list, with our Overall Game of the Year award being announced on January 20.

Last Wednesday we added 1994’s X-Com: UFO Defense to our growing list of video game classics, presented by MobyGames.com.

Ask fans about X-Com: UFO Defense and you’ll likely be told enthusiastic stories about what’s largely regarded as one of the turn-based genre’s seminal strategy games. The game put players in the role of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM, for short), a secret squad responsible for fending off an alien invasion by assimilating their technology. Tactical combat, global strategy, UFO lore, and a heavy emphasis on resource management joined a host of player-driven customization options in order to create X-Com: UFO Defense’s incredibly beloved formula.

Shacknews user (and X-Com super-duper-fan) mastermike569 explains why tactically and strategically saving the world from aliens is so rewarding. “I’ve personally pumped easily over 1,500 hours into this game playing it over the years and am an enormous fan,” he begins. “This is the only game that I really go back to time and time again.”

“This game has so many ways around situations that the amount of strategy you can put to use is only limited by your imagination,” he continues, touting X-Com’s flexibility with regard to player-strategy.

“The attention to accuracy regarding UFO’s, the addicting game play, ever-changing maps and environments, and the nearly limitless strategy and music to tie it all in are some of the things that keep me coming back time and time again,” he concludes.

Check out the original Chatty thread for more stories and memories from X-Com: UFO Defense.

X-Com: UFO Defense on MobyGames.com

In the year 1998, the amount of reports of UFO sightings has been drastically increased. Stories about abductions and alien attacks became more and more widespread. Finally, after various nations of the world have failed to intercept the UFOs, their representatives met in a conference of global importance in Geneva, Switzerland. It was eventually decided to organize a secret paramilitary group, dubbed Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM). Starting with one base, two fighters, one transport, and a few soldiers, X-COM must locate the aliens, learn about their origins and technology, find out where their base is, and destroy it.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Batman: Arkham Asylum impressed audiences by bucking the trend of licensed superhero games. It wasn’t just “good for a superhero game”; it was an unqualified success, both critically and commercially. Years later, developer Rocksteady had the unenviable (and inevitable) task of creating a sequel. They attempted to craft a game that could expand the concept of Arkham Asylum without compromising its original vision, and in many ways Batman: Arkham City does just that.

The shock of a quality Batman game may have worn off in the years since our visit to the creepy mental hospital, and players had mixed reactions to the expansion of a larger open world. However, the game refined and honed some of the best qualities from Arkham Asylum. One of the most responsive third-person combat systems in modern games felt even more so with the addition of double-counters and expanded gadgetry, letting the Dark Knight wreak even more havoc on any thugs dumb enough to take him on. The story was overhauled from a glorified steroid metaphor into a winding, twisting narrative that spanned the character’s canon and weaved villains against each other. This led to a shocking, poignant conclusion that could go toe-to-toe with some of the best graphic novels DC has to offer.

Batman: Arkham City may have felt less revolutionary than its predecessor, but it was a sharpened iteration that made good on its promise and further cemented the so-called Arkhamverse as one of the most unique ones the character has to offer. It just so happens to take place almost entirely in the realm of our chosen medium, and that’s something to celebrate.

The Shacknews 2011 Game of the Year awards are based on a weighted scoring system between all staff writers and editors [here's how it works!]. Last week we revealed our “Honorable Mentions,” which include the titles that did not quite make our overall ‘Top Five Games of the Year.’ This week we reveal that Top Five list, with our Overall Game of the Year award being announced on January 20.