BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge
| Battletech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Westwood Associates |
| Publisher(s) | Infocom |
| Producer(s) | Scott Berfield Tony Van |
| Designer(s) | Tony Van |
| Programmer(s) | David R. Dettmer Barry Green |
| Artist(s) | Chuck Austen Scott Berfield Joseph B. Hewitt IV Jenny Martin Rick Parks Aaron E. Powell Don Woo |
| Composer(s) | Paul S. Mudra Dwight Kenichi Okahara |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release | 1990 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time tactics |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a real-time tactics game based in the FASA BattleTech universe. Developed by Westwood Associates for Mediagenic, and produced by Scott Berfield, it is a major milestone in the gaming industry in that the game serves as a prototype for what later became Dune 2, the first real-time strategy title on the PC.
Essentially, The Crescent Hawks' Revenge was the turning point in PC strategy gaming, where a genre formerly dominated by turn-based titles would begin a massive shift towards real-time. Later Westwood titles, Dune 2 and Command & Conquer, would expand this newly established real-time strategy gameplay.
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge used a proto-real-time strategy engine that allowed players to pause the game every time orders were issued to a unit. Players could also speed up or slow down time, allowing them to play the game at any desired pace. The combat was modeled modestly well after classic BattleTech rules, much more so than the later Mech Commander, making The Crescent Hawks' Revenge one of the few BattleTech games to closely follow the rule set of the board game.
The main part of the game was a linear campaign of missions, where the player was presented with a tactical battle that could last anywhere from 5 minutes to 50 minutes. The first mission involves a simple battle between a Jenner mech and a Locust mech, serving as a tutorial and story kick-off. Later missions would give the player control of 4 mechs in their 'command lance' and 2 additional lances.
The mechs in the command lance could be controlled individually or given orders together as a lance, while mechs in the two other lances were controlled by issuing orders to the entire lance only. This is another major strategy milestone, as The Crescent Hawks' Revenge had the concept of allowing the player to control both individual units and groups of units using the same control scheme.
The campaign is noted for its variety, where the player would be tasked with objectives ranging from defending a crashed dropship, to stalling enemy units for a set amount of time, to protecting a convoy that is attempting to load up with ammunition. Campaign missions sometimes had multiple endings, and the outcome of a battle could influence the following missions.
However, the campaign is also noted as being very difficult, with some early campaign choices making subsequent missions much harder without the player realizing it. While the game attempted to present the player with multiple ways to complete some missions, the methods often varied wildly in difficulty, and the player would not know this until after trying all options.
...
Wikipedia