BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge Review 1990

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a real-time tactics computer game developed by Westwood Associates in 1990 for MS-DOS.

While Revenge stands as a precursor to Dune 2 RTS (1992) its focus is on real-time tactics -- there is no base-building or adventure-gaming. Revenge is not a hybrid.

Campaign & Presentation

Players assume the role of Crescent Hawk MechWarrior, Jason Youngblood, as he searches for his missing father who was captured by the Draconis Combine. Revenge is set in the year 3029 of the Succession Wars.

The campaign consists of a series of missions that are linked together by a storyline that is told through static bitmaps overlaid by dialogue.

BattleTech Combat System

Revenge's combat system is based on FASA's BattleTech wargame. The computerization of the BattleTech ruleset is what makes Revenge historically significant. Not so much the ruleset itself but rather how Revenge represents the ruleset in a computer game.

The combat system is real-time tactics presented on a 2D top-down playing field. Players control up to three BattleMech lances on urban, wilderness and urban-wilderness battlemaps. Players move units about and target enemy units in real-time (the speed of the "playback" tailorable).

Each tile aka map square represents 30x30 meters of terrain, and each tile is assigned an x-y coord that facilitates accurate unit placement. The control-cursor is a blinking, tile-sized bounding box that is used to select combat units, destination tiles and targets. There is no marquee selection of units (an early 80s operating system technology).

You click your unit, click move in the command panel that pops up, select a tile (a map square) to move to and then click done. When you click to move, a waypoint line appears over the playing field that traces your path in real-time. You can also choose your movement rate. In addition, moving BattleMechs are harder to hit than stationary ones (there is a to-hit penalty).

You can also use the F-keys to select units. You can even group-select formations (a lance of BattleMechs) with the F-keys and have the units move or attack together as one. Moreover, there are 10 different formations.

Targeting works similarly: you click your unit, click target in the command box that pops up, click the target and then click done. And clicking on enemy units calls up their status readouts.

Since the combat is fully real-time there is no reviewable, text-based combat feedback log that records to-hit rolls or damage. Instead, there is only a messaging system (MSG) that updates players on events as they unfold (radio comms between mechs and lances).

 

Tactics include concentrated fire via Fire-at-Will, defensive fire, taking cover, ammo conservation, overburn toggle, jumpjets, movement rate adjustment, firing-on-the-move, formational movement and flanking maneuvers. Line-of-Sight is employed (LoS).

Moreover, later missions feature DropShip commands that confer intelligence reports and satellite imagery. They can also be used to facilitate combined-arms tactics. For example, artillery can be commanded to shell specific squares via Shell Coords or bombard the battlescape via Rolling Barrage. In addition, AeroSpace Fighters can be called in to conduct strafing runs via Call Strafing.

Mission outcomes sometimes carry over to the next mission. For example, damage incurred to BattleMechs sometimes carries over. And an enemy that managed to flee may appear as a reinforcement in the next mission. Sometimes there is a choice between this battle-map or that one.

BattleTech BattleMechs

BattleMech's are constituted by several interpretable stats and abilities:

• All-range Firepower: none, light, moderate, heavy, brutal, devastating, incredible
• Short-range firepower
• Medium-range firepower
• Long-range firepower
• Speed (movement rate: none, slow, average, medium, fast, very fast)
• Armament: missile launcher, machine-gun, autocannon
• Ammo: missiles, machine-gun bullets, autocannon rounds
• Armor (expressed in percentage)
• Armor Type: none, light, medium, heavy massive
• Level of Heat (heat build-up and heat dissipation: none, warm, moderate hot, dangerous, extreme shut down)
• Jumpjets

Naturally, it is important to employ the right BattleMech and loadout for the job, while also keeping a sharp eye on Armor percentage and Heat levels during battle.

Other vehicles include trucks, tanks, APCs and hovercraft (tracked, wheeled and hover).

BattleTech Terrain

There are seven terrain-types. Terrain impacts LoS, movement rate, weapon accuracy, weapon viability and heat levels. In addition, some terrain tiles are destructible. For example, via firepower forests can be burned down and structures can be flattened. Also, some structures are destroyed by mechs walking over them.

• Open Plains/Roads
• Light Woods
• Heavy Forest
• Rocks/Boulders
• Mountains
• Water
• Buildings/Structures

BattleTech Graphics

Revenge's tile-based battlescapes are presented in 2D top-down perspective at a screen resolution of 320x200. Revenge runs in VGA graphics mode though its battlescape palette range is akin to 16-color EGA. In addition, the palette is not well-selected: sprites and backdrops are cold and dark in color, making the sprites (units and projectiles) difficult to discern on battlemaps.

Via mouse, joystick or cursor keys battlescapes scroll in eight directions (avatar-anchorless edgecreen screen-scrolling), but the scrolling is not smooth: Revenge lacks 50 FPS per-pixel hardware scrolling (an early-80s technology).

BattleMechs are represented on battlescapes as tile-sized sprites. Not smoothly animated or well-drawn even by late-80s standards, the sprites move across the battlescape in rigid tile-based increments; they do not smoothy slide from one tile to another, complete with walk-cycles, yet MechWarrior 1 featured 3D walk-cycles in 1989. And the sprites are only drawn in four degrees of rotation, not eight, even though they can move in eight directions and the screen scrolls in eight directions (diagonally). [1]

Projectile sprites can barely be seen as they flash across the battlescape. Imagine if a shoot 'em up's projectiles could barely be seen? It would be castigated, written off.

Sound effects consists of bleeps and blurps for the most part, but there is some (low-fidelity) digitized speech and the tunes are not terrible, but overall the audio is not up to 1990s standards.

BattleTech Conclusion

It's the same old story, a story that can be told about many MS-DOS tactics and strategy games of the late-80s and early-90s. Many of these computer games are mechanically king-tier but came too early to take advantage of massive software and hardware engineering advancements that would come from IBM, Intel and Microsoft just one year later; advancements that have been enumerated in my History of 1990s Computer Games.

Worse than that though, like many MS-DOS games of the late-80s and early-90s Revenge did not take advantage of preexisting technologies. It didn't push available hardware at all, but it did make big in-roads into real-time multi-unit mechanics and battle control.

Revenge exhibits apex-level game design pedigree and computerizes the BattleTech ruleset admirably, but it is coded to run on as little as 8088 and 8086 processors, 640 KB RAM and MS-DOS 3.0.

Such technology did not constitute an optimal computer-game platform on which to develop an action-based tactics game, which is shown in Revenge's scrolling routine, spritework and user interface clarity, functionality and responsiveness.

Imagine if Revenge was coded for Pentium CPUs and square-pixel SVGA 640x480 display mode. Or even coded for 486es (math coprocessor) in non-standard VGA with 2D hardware scrolling and hardware sprites...

Revenge does not have enough in the way of player-interpretable stats or combat feedback. Also, it should have been a turn-based computer game for three main reasons:

• FASA's BattleTech is a turn-based game
• Turn-based is superior to real-time (for 2D tactics/strategy games)
• You can get away with non-smooth scrolling, poor engine performance and clunky control systems under turn-based combat systems (because they are not action-based)

***

Footnote:

[1]

Here is an example of quality top-down graphics from 1988-90. On the left you have a 16-color palette; on the right a 32-color palette. See how much you can do with one-eighth of a VGA color range?

Both games run on 1987-tech (an Amiga 500). With smooth scrolling. And better audio. And very clear and responsive UIs. Don't tell me tactics/strategy computer games of the same era could not get similar results. It just comes down to coding, graphic design and hardware; there is no "mystery."

Yes, that is a different type of computer game; a future-sports computer game that plays like English football computer games. Doesn't matter. Same perspective and resolution. Also, a sprite is a sprite: dimensions, color palette, anim frames. That's it.

cf. MechWarrior 1.

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