Xbox

MechAssault

Shooter

Achievements: No trophy list
Time to beat: about 7.8 hours

Overview

MechAssault is a 2002 video game released for the Xbox. Developed by Day 1 Studios and FASA Studio and published by Microsoft, MechAssault was initiated when Denny Thorley of Day 1 Studios approached Jon Kimmich of Microsoft about developing an original BattleTech game built from the ground up to support console play. notable for being one of the first games to support Xbox Live online multiplayer. A sequel, MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf, was released on December 28, 2004. Both games are set in the BattleTech fictional universe.

MechAssault takes place in the BattleTech universe, a science-fiction universe that often revolves around pitched battles between human-piloted walking, heavily armed and armored machines, called BattleMechs. The plot of the game centers on an inhabited planet called Helios in the dominion of the Inner Sphere, a powerful coalition of feuding factions in control of large areas of space. The player is a BattleMech pilot (referred to throughout the game as simply "Captain" or, "MechWarrior") in the employment of an elite mercenary organization called Wolf's Dragoons. The player's ship is hired to investigate the cessation of communications from the planet Helios. The Dragoons' ship, the Icarus arrives at the planet and is shot down upon entering the atmosphere, causing the ship to crash-land on the surface of Helios.

GameSpot named it the best Xbox game of November 2002, and later presented it with the annual awards for "Best Online Game on Xbox", "Best Shooter on Xbox", and overall "Game of the Year on Xbox". It was a runner-up in the publication's "Best Sound" and "Best Graphics (Technical)" categories. The game won the awards for "Best Online Xbox Game" and "Best Online Console Game" at The Electric Playground's 2002 Blister Awards, and was nominated for "Best Graphics in a Console Game", "Best Console Shooter" and "Xbox Game of the Year", but lost to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Graphics, Xbox Game of the Year) and Metroid Prime, respectively.

By July 2006, the game had sold 750,000 units and earned $26 million in the U.S. NextGen ranked it as the 85th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between October 2000 and July 2006 in that country. Combined sales of the MechAssault series reached 1.1 million units.