Anyway, getting back to what a Battletech Center was, during the late 80's - early 90's some major cities had Battletech Centers, which were giant rooms filled with Battletech simulator games. After paying a fee, gamers got the chance to sit in one of these simulators and go to war with people in the other simulators. Unfortunately these centers never caught on and were soon forgotten.
Why am I bringing this up? Read on.
MechAssault is graphical feat and really shows off what the Xbox is capable of. Everything is amazingly detailed right down to foot prints in snow, realistic battle damage, and frost appearing on your Mech when it's cold. One of the really amazing things is how each level is scaled to fit your Mech. For example, if you're piloting an Elemental, the game world will look much larger than it would if you were playing as an Atlas. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but it adds a lot to the immersion factor. The developers even took weight into account with some terrain types. Bigger Mechs will have an even harder time running through water and snow than lighter Mechs. It's these little details that make the game even better.
When you first start a mission with a Mech, it's nice and shiny. As it takes battle damage, the Mech will begin to smoke and buckle. Eventually smoke will begin to billow out of your Mech, it will begin to spark, and the seams on your Mech will begin to glow as the reactor core begins to overload. As if these didn't make things tense enough, as your Mech nears destruction it will even begin to limp and drag its smoldering body like a wounded animal trying a last desperate attempt to escape a predator.
Warfare has never sounded this good - especially to those with Dolby 5.1 capabilities. Multi-rockets flying all over the map, machine guns rattling, and sweet sound of energy weapons charging up all help to make MechAssault's audio experience as immersive as its visual component. My only real complaint with the sound is the absence of a custom soundtrack feature. It's not that the music is particularly bad - in fact you're likely to never hear it with all the other sounds going on - but blowing up my friends on Live would be so much better with a few metal tracks in the background.