This was the perennial battle tech game.
Based around the coolest period of the BT universe, with the best art style.
In the decade past, FASA has disbanded, the property has returned to the original creator, but subverted severely, it's been turned into something more akin to yugioh, with large chunky mechs similar to the fisher price style horrors from the cartoon of the mid 90s. A lot of its appeal has also been lost with the story line going haywire, with word of blake...
the latest game from FASA interactive really shows what the franchise has devolved into. Once glorious, ultra real, ultra fantastical toys for grown up guys, with things like the simulator pod spaceworld type places, and full on joystick, throttle and pedal based support for MW2... it's just such a sad shadow of what it used to be.
That box art... perfectly represents the universe in its prime. Striking, daunting, yet strangely beautiful, the Timberwolf on the cover looked every bit as fearsome as its fictional (and real) reputation.
The next game MW3, featured a different looking Timberwolf; still with two missle pods, rounded cockpit and hexagonal prisms for arms, its details softened, were made more ronuded... and very much less appealing.
The latter games the Timber Wolf/mad cat... had become a parody of its original form, with hideously chunky legs and feet, and a slow lumbering motion that spoke nothing of it's original conqueror of the galaxy legacy.
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A perfect Mechwarrior game would feature the kind of artstyle prominent on that boxcover, in the intros of the game, with today's hardware.
Akin to the Gundam tech demo shown, but set in the Battle Tech universe... not just in the battle tech universe, but detailing the clan's point of view again (MW2 was from the perspective of the clans), the alien and spartan culture that was gritty and fit like hand in glove into the desolate future where a fusion of ultrafuturistic and ancient immutable technological ideas occur. How perfect would something like that be? But it won't be done. Ever again. At least not while MS retains a firm grip on the franchise.
For those of us that have given up hope of something like that, Steel Battalion would probably have to be closest in spirit to the idea of mech game that they probably originally wanted to have... before they turned the franchise into dust with its useless 'arcade' style shenanigans. It's a great tribute... but it's just not quite... there.
No, it's no Mechwarrior 2.