The Best Mech Game (for me) - Heavy Gear 2

I go back to 1999 and play Heavy Gear II by Activision! -- Watch live at / gamerzakh Wanna buy any game on GOG? Use this referral link to support: af.gog.com/?as... Thanks!

[@Metoollhead]

Played the repack a little while ago. This game aged REALLY well. Highly recommended to anybody who likes VOTOMs or mecha in general

[@PinWriter]

It was the best mech game along with Earthsiege. The mech can kneel, prone, slide, skate... it can do so much (while in game's engine capability).

[@GamerZakhXL]

The fact that these are 90s games is insane. Could release today with a slight graphics upgrade and people wouldn't question it.

[@vahnn0]

This game was AWESOME back in the day. I was lucky enough to be able to play it multiplayer for a while and it was so much fun.

[@TheRafaelRamos]

Heavy Gear and Armored Core are the best mech games from the 90s! The aesthetics and action were unbeatable! Great vid Zakh!

[@GamerZakhXL]

Thanks! I really wish they made a proper Heavy Gear 3, but they botched the newer games.

[@smyers820gm]

Hell no 😂😂😂😂😂 mechwarrior is king. This game was created because they couldn’t do anything with mechwarrior or battletech legally 🤷‍♂️

[@heliosgames6665]

I found this game in a magazine as a kid, has been my favorite mech game ever, I later got into their tabletop and got my heart broken by Heavy Gear: Assault :'(

[@MrSeriouslynot]

this game needs a Heavy Gear 3.

[@turinhorse]

dude... HG1 and HG2 vet here. still two of my favorite games of all time. The multiplayer HG2 server was incredible fun. to all GEARS out there!!!

[@EduFirenze]

The other day I was looking at some old boxes at my parents and randomly found heavy gear's manual. Brought back so many memories, the drawins of the mechs I would spend hours listening to music and trying to copy. Great times.

[@GamerZakhXL]

Yeah this game holds up. Kind of rough but playing it again makes you want a proper remake of it.

[@cloacky4409]

I'm a mechwarrior/battletech kinda guy, but I'm really willing to give this a shot - looks very interesting

[@smyers820gm]

Me too but I played both. Yes it’s a good game. It is exactly what the next evolution of mechwarrior SHOULD have been 🤷‍♂️

[@hennwei]

omg i miss this game.

[@GamerZakhXL]

It's such a good one from the 90s.

[@peacecrafttrue]

I haven't played this in like two decades but it still feels like yesterday. Kaiji Kage still best squad mate. I'm having topographical issues: raised terrain is transparent. Sounds like convenient wall hacks but I flat out can't tell if theres mountains obscuring my shots til i shoot. Shogo was the only other game I remember of the time that had the run or drive option, but also had a full vehicle mode too. HG2 still best.

[@GamerZakhXL]

I'm not sure how to fix the transparent raised terrain, I sometimes have it too when I run the game but for this recording it wasn't a problem. You can try adjust your GPU settings for the game, I remember messing with my Nvidia settings to get this looking a bit better and that might've fixed the terrain issie.

[@Wafelkowiec]

Will you be playing ucoming AC6? Personally I'd be intrested in your playthrough.

[@GamerZakhXL]

As in Assassin's Creed? The Mrs usually plays AC games, she's played them all. I tend to watch her play haha. I don't have plans to play it right now but if something hits right then I jump on it.

[@Wafelkowiec]

@@GamerZakhXL I meant Armored Core 6. I had no idea that Ubi is cooking something with similar short. Sorry for confusion.

[@GamerZakhXL]

@@Wafelkowiec Ah that does make a lot more sense on a Heavy Gear video haha! I don't have anything scheduled for playing that at the moment. Haven't really looked at it properly though, I'll check it out.

[@icoborg]

heavy gear has different vibe than mechwarrior...the units are clearly smaller, more similar to patlabor o votoms ...

[@GamerZakhXL]

Yeah I generally prefer this, feels more human which is more my thing.

[@SnakebitSTI]

MechWarrior games are often canonically out of scale. "Heavy" mechs are the weight of modern main battle tanks.

[@leftwardglobe1643]

@@SnakebitSTI Yeah, which is really unfortunate. I wish MW (and Battletech generally) would commit to the proper scale more. It would make things much more interesting, both visually and in terms of gameplay. That said, I do personally like Mechwarrior games more than this for a couple reasons. Firstly it's a lot less punishing in terms of difficulty, which as shown here can get a little ridiculous even in the early levels. Secondly, while they both have tank controls, which are very much nonsensical for what they are trying to represent and unnecessarily clunky, I think Heavy Gear suffers more from that aspect than MW, especially when compared to titles from around the same time. Thirdly, and I think this is obvious, customization in MW games has always been much more detailed and rewarding to me. Heavy Gear definitely has much more interesting flavor to it, both as a game and as a setting I think, and the Tabletop game's current edition is amazing if you've ever played it (if not, hit me up, more than willing to get a game in over TTS, though it's been some time so I might not remember all the rules off the top of my head), plus I get to LARP Votoms, but as a mech sim it's just a weird middleground between tanks and mechs that didn't sit well with me when I tried to play it. It tries to be fluid and fast and have really high stakes gameplay, but then limits your controls in such a way that actually playing that way is severely punished. The odd thing is, if they didn't lean so hard into their influences from Mechwarrior at the time and instead took more from something like Armored Core with its controls, I think it would have been better. But with how the license has been developing over the years I don't think we'll ever see another attempt unfortunately.

[@rafaelnv2]

love this game!

[@V1PER7964]

I'd set myself up in that square map with a heavy railgun and just kill bots lol. Was so much fun

[@hgahsiea]

Guided mortar!!!

[@Producadv]

Really appreciate this video, so far most of the gameplay on youtube is overtly stealth gameplay. I think a modern rendition of this game would benefit from a sniper elite style detection with enemy's seeing you and last known location along with just a general "element of surprise." Seems rather improbable everyone would be back to chilling after watching their buddy fall apart into a sack of potatoes lol.

[@GamerZakhXL]

I would love a modern version of this. I know Mechwarrior is more successful so it gets new games, but I prefer the smaller scale. There was some kind of new Heavy Gear game but it didn't turn out so well.

[@Producadv]

@@GamerZakhXL Yeah it was an arena shooter that focused on monetization, and mech properties are usually so love and fan based if you try to monetize it in a predatory way the fans will let it fall to the way side. Only exception I can think of was mechwarrior online. I also would like another one of these, I like the aesthetic more than mechwarrior for sure. The mech designs also just seem to be the most realistic out of all the mech properties in terms of what would they be used for in combined arms warfare.

[@SnakebitSTI]

I think oh so many games would benefit from the enemy AI tracking you based on point last seen. So many of them either give up if you break line of sight for a few moments or omnisciently home in on you.

[@timcarbone007]

Nice!

[@GamerZakhXL]

Thanks!

[@lordtomlluckrahthegreat9014]

The biggest complaint I have with this game is that setting up the all the key binds is a pain in the ass. My mouse has a ton of buttons but I can hardly use any. It also has the same "problem" as Mechwarrior 4, where the Alt, Ctrl and Shift keys cannot be bound by themselves, and need to be bound in combination with a different key in order to use them at all, like keyboard shortcuts. I don't know who came up with that system but (even though it sounds good, in practice) it's an awful and dated system; I'd much prefer to have more keys readily available, both on my left and right hand, than having to remember these key-combos in the heat of battle. This can be solved using macros but, for the casual player, the possible layouts are hideous. Aside from that, the game is lovely and I hasn't really aged that badly, specially for how original and avant-garde it is. No other similar game had really been done before, nor after, it's conception, and it's commercial failure is baffling considering it's level of quality.

[@Atrahasis7]

I always loved this much more than battletech. Dont get me wrong battletech is cool but i was never fan of some mech designs, and it seems like the entire world revolves around the mechs, in heavy gear its more like votoms they are treated like any other armoured vehicle. With a specific purpose, in this case fast assault. We will never see Heavy Gear 3.

[@PhotriusPyrelus]

I can see the appeal, but I prefer MechWarrior. Heat management, ammo management (yes, Heavy Gear has ammo, but it seems almost an afterthought), location-specific damage (both offensively and defensively). The flaws system seems like it could be interesting, though. Also tend to prefer the slower, more deliberate gameplay. MechWarrior often gets criticized as just and FPS pretending to be a sim; but Heavy Gear to MechWarrior is like Crimson Skies to MicroSoft Flight Sim. Lastly, MechWarrior 2 was an Activision game, too. I miss when Activision was amazing.

[@MemeLordCthulhu]

No boost?

[@Fastwinstondoom]

Let's face it, there are two kinds of people in this world! Those who prefer Mechwarrior and those who are wrong :D

[@GamerZakhXL]

Haha I've been told I'm wrong for preferring Heavy Gear many times. I see the appeal of Mechwarrior though, looks awesome it's just I happened to get this game as a kid instead.

[@Jayy997]

The critical hit bullshit isn't hard. That's just terrible design. Not sure how you can recommend such a shitty game.

[@GamerZakhXL]

I'm not recommending it, I'm sharing what I like. I like it, lots of people like it, of course not everyone likes it. Mechwarrior is the more popular series for a reason.

[@smyers820gm]

@@GamerZakhXLI always thought if they combined elements of both it would have been the pinnacle of armored mecha games