My mech weighs 70 tons, and I feel every pound as I plod along the streets of a frozen-over metropolis. It's been a long time since I sat in a MechWarrior game’s cockpit, and controlling this tank-like mech’s arms, torso, and legs independently feels like trying to pedal a bicycle with my hands. Then I see the other team’s first volley of long-range missiles arcing over the mountain ridge. They slam into me with a force of a freight train and my alarm systems scream bloody murder in my ear. It’s all certainly very raucous, and fights are intense at times, but after 20 matches of the same thing it’s become less exciting. It’s a long, tough road to become an adept MechWarrior Online player, and without more modes and variety, I don’t think it’ll hold my interest long enough to get there.

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Multiplayer combat is the sole focus of the free-to-play MechWarrior Online. There's no campaign, only 12-vs-12 matchups that involve a scant two modes of resource collection, base capture, or more often than not, mass mech destruction. Battles have a much different pace to them than what you’d expect from a shooter, and after I struggled to learn the ropes of its slow and complex combat system (with little instruction to guide me,) I found it a welcome change.

MechWarrior Online is smart in how it rewards cautious play, thoughtful weapon use, and using advanced tactics like taking advantage of weather conditions to secure victory. There's no sprinting around the map – you use a throttle to set your speed, which depending on the weight of your Light, Medium, Heavy, or Assault mech, can be quite slow. Mechs feel cumbersome to control initially, and moving through tight spaces can be like trying to navigate a semi truck through a parking structure. While you’re doing that you have to pay close attention to the heat your weapons generate, lest they overload and shut you down on the spot. You also must to keep track of which pieces of your mech have been blasted to bits in combat, or else you'll be trying to take on a foe with a particle projection cannon (PPC) that no longer works and get knocked out of the round. There’s a lot more to think about here, and that’s a good thing.

But it’s inconsistent. Matches swing between fast and furious and long and drawn out, and it can be dull when you and your team traipse around a vast map without an enemy in sight for long periods of time. When things finally heat up, combat is incredibly intense as you scramble to keep yourself intact with hellfire raining down on you from every direction. It's somewhere in the middle where the 12-vs-12 matches really feel like they have the scale and intensity the creators imagined, and you must think on the fly about what kind of opposition you're engaging and how. Loading

Figuring out how to be a contributing member of a team takes a while, with only a very brief movement tutorial and a "free roam mode" as teaching tools (I recommend lots of YouTube videos). It's easy to be turned off by this before you have a chance to get to the meat of MechWarrior Online, as getting blown to pieces shortly after the match started is pretty discouraging. Persevere, though, and it’ll reward you.

MechWarrior Online's most controversial feature is its "noob friendly" third-person camera mode, which allows you to peek around corners and see angles you can’t from a cockpit. To balance out concerns from high-level players, Piranha has given third-person players an easily spotted camera-bot and disabled their minimaps. A newer player, I usually find myself sticking with first-person as the mini-map is too valuable to lose, and honestly it just feels like the mode MWO was meant to be played in. If there’s an advantage in battle to the third-person perspective, it’s subtle. Loading

Almost more fun than combat itself is the process of buying and building up your own stable of mechs, all of which are graphically gorgeous. Fortunately, when you first start MechWarrior Online you get a currency boost that allows you to rack up in-game cash quickly, and it's a lot of fun saving up for a mech you want and tricking it out with a broad selection of custom weaponry like gauss rifles, lasers, and long-range missiles. Your mech build is far more involved than the simple loadout you'll find in typical shooters, and its where half of the strategy of MechWarrior Online comes in. You must figure out which weapon configurations work best with your mech and your playstyle, and then how to effectively use them in combat. The system felt overwhelming initially, but over time I was able to deduce what works and what doesn't, through a process of many, many deaths. Personally, I prefer catapult-type launchers that siege enemies from afar, rather than up-close brawlers whose combat style results in my destruction more often than not.

It’s also where the reminder that MWO is a free-to-play game comes in. When you’re buying and building it becomes apparent that a certain amount of machines are locked behind a paywall, though it isn't necessarily "pay to win." The premium mechs (anywhere from $7 to $30 a piece) look cooler than the others and have XP and cash bonuses, but you can buy other machines of comparable power with earned in-game currency if you save up long enough and choose your upgrades intelligently. It's commendable that Piranha has allowed you to build up competitive-quality mechs without paying. Still, it’s frustrating that some of the high-end mechs are only available through real-money purchases, and the freemium content can be a bit in your face at times.