Updating the MechWarrior 2 concepts by greatly increasing unit speed and movement fidelity is the right way to bring old-style mecha shooters back to modern standards. However, I question not keeping MechWarrior 2's low times-to-kill. High-speed maneuvering and jousting between mechs that take five real-time minutes to down makes high-speed movement feel unwieldy and overtuned. Battlemetal's engine is an open-sourced DarkPlaces fork, and I'm so excited to see what comes of the engine, or if anyone picks it up and makes new games with it. The technical groundwork done here is impressive.

Battlemetal the game, however, is mostly non-functional and slapdash in execution. The game presents like the fastest-possible asset fill-in to prove that the engine can actually play a game. The game, as software, struggles to size windows and text correctly or execute campaign elements in the intended way. Battlemetal might be fun if you hop on it with a handful of mech-minded friends, or for the study of mecha games as a genre, though.