Virtual World / Battletech Center

[jamcat]

Just curious. Has anybody ever played at the Virtual World/Battletech Centers? Just thought about that over Shane's comment about VR as the next thing.

Actually I used to work at the Chicago North Pier location of the Battletech Center, before they closed down the place and moved the pods to Dave & Busters. The Battletech game was fun, but got boring after awhile. Just a PC game of "laser tag" with robots housed in funky "workstation" pods.

I liked the second game we offered much more, which was Red Planet. In Red Planet you would race hovercraft through Deathstar-like mining complexes on Mars. The sensation of flight in this game was amazing. It was always a rush kicking on the boosters and trying to fly full speed through the mining complex without crashing. Too bad FASA never made a home version of Red Planet.

[Darksol]

I was only to the Battletech center once, and I loved it. Back 10 years ago having a game where I could drive the mech with real levers and throttle was great. It was a great example of a networked game at the time . Along with the gameplay is the real factor. Feeling like i wasn't playing the game with a standard console controller or mouse made all the difference in the world to me.

[jamcat]

The pods were cool, especially the round "M&M" looking ones when I was there, but the gameplay was pretty simplistic for all those controls. Again, basically run and shoot. It would have been nice if they allowed you to eject from a damaged mech to play on foot in the arena. To either try to hijack another mech or vehicle for yourself, or to be able to man a gun turret on a building and try to peg off mechs from there.

It would also have been nice if they had hand to hand combat for the humanoid type mechs when you ran out of ammo. Would have been so cool to punch, kick, or throw a mech into a building or at another mech. Or rip the arm off of a mech and beat it with it's own arm.