Well, I’m finally going to buy one of these games, MechWarrior 4. I’ve always loved the storyline and I played the VR immersion games back in the early nineties to much enjoyment.
My question is about what joystick/accessory combos are recommended. Any advice on what to buy when I make that trip to Best Buy? I really want to soak up my Xmas gift to myself :).
Haven’t yet got MechWarrior 4, but I’ll tell you my experience with MechWarrior 3.
Played it on old computer with just keyboard and mouse, it was a dream to control, and it had the wonderful and extremely sensible feature of being able to the crosshair around on the screen with the mouse, rather than having to turn your whole 'mech in order to shoot something slightly off to one side. I fell in love with that at once, cause I found the lack of that extremely frustrating in MechWarrior 2.
Then I bought my new computer, complete with joystick. Thought that there couldn’t really be a way of using joystick/keyboard that was as easy and intuitive as using keyboard/mouse, but what the hell, I thought, I’ll give it a go anyway. Turns out I was right, the throttle was kinda nice, but there wasn’t a way of moving the crosshair without turning the 'mech. OK, I thought, I’ll just grow a third arm and use the mouse for doing that. Nope, on my new computer the mouse has for some inexplicable reason been fixed to rotating the 'mech’s torso, which is even worse than turning it for aiming purposes. And I can’t get it to stop it!!! So I now haven’t actually got to the end of MW3 yet.
Moral of the story: I dunno, I just wanted to rant. 
But keyboard/mouse will probably be perfectly fine, unless you have three arms, in which case grab a nice force feedback joystick as well.
I still play Mechwarrior 2, MW2: Ghost Bear and Mercs a lot. Love them. I don’t have a fancy 3d card I can use for new stuff.
Like Cumber, I was a master with the mouse/keyboard combo, but fell at odds with the joystick. Using the “hat” button just doesn’t cut it. I’m pretty sure I was able to continue using the mouse/keyboard combo for MW3, but I couldn’t tell you for sure (it’s been a few months since I’ve played).
WRT the OP, I’m sorry, I guess I’m not much help, but I’ve been using a Wingman Extreme for years as my all-around joystick and don’t have too many complaints. I’d go with the m/k combo, though.
Well, I guess I’ll just go buy the game today and hold off on the joystick. I assumed that a joystick would be ideal for total immersion in this sucker, but I’ll give it a shot with the keyboard/mouse combo. I’m still looking for suggestions on a joystick however, I’ll still probably want to try it for myself, and I’ll probably be getting a flight sim sometime too.
I’ve heard a lot of bad things about joysticks for the recent Mechwarrior games. I’ve used mouse/keyboard, which works well enough. I would save a joystick for flight sims.
Tell me what you think of Mech4, because I’m debating whether to buy it or not.
We’ve got MW4 (it’s awesome) and we use a joystick for it… the MS Sidewinder Pro USB
The controls are better for MW4 than they were for MW3.
Oh, and if you are afraid you won’t figure out the joystick controls, here is some comforting news: Nicky (who is 5) can play MechWarrior 4 as well as I can. And I don’t suck.
Well, I have returned, one MechWarrior 4 Vengance and one MS Optical Intellimouse richer.
I’ll let you all know what I think. Since I’m at it let me pitch a bitch about installing this fucking mouse. It works great when you install to a PS2 port, but blows ass with the USB.
I had to go in and play with the frickin’ Bios and use the damn Win98 SE CD-Rom. Isn’t all this shit supposed to be in the setup disc?
Anyways, I have been reading the instructions and I’m starting to get intimidated by the keyboard controls, no way I’ll be able to remember this stuff during the game. I’m wishing I’d jumped on the joystick while i was there. Anyways, we’ll give it a fair shot with the mouse/keyboard and see how it goes. I’ve never been a big fan of keyboard controlled games as it is, so I’m guessing I’m biased towards a joystick.
Also, in my haste I didn’t check Cnet before buying, they seriously hype using a MS Sidewinder joystick with the twist function. Makes sense I suppose, being an MS game and all. Looks like I’m gonna be getting a stick, hopefully the quirks you guys found have been fixedin version 4.
Opal, sounds good to me, I’ll probably be picking up the game and stick you recommend this or next weekend. Or the one Omni mentioned, I’ve not decide yet.
The keyboard controls are actually really easy to remember. Not from reading the manual tho, but you remember them once you play the game. And they don’t all fit on the joystick anyway, there are more commands than there are buttons on the keyboard (cause of ctrl, alt, & shift commands). I recommend you read the manual, then just play the game with the quick reference sheet out and look up the ones you can’t remember. By the time you get to the difficult bits where you’d get killed by doing that you won’t need the reference sheet anyway.