MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries' Steam debut may have been delayed—but when you're an 80ft steel war machine, I think we can forgive a little tardiness.
Originally launching on Epic back in December 2019, MechWarrior 5 was set to hit other platforms when its year-long exclusivity period ended in December 2020. But with the looming threat of Cyberpunk 2077's release on the horizon, the stompy robot sim was pushed back into this year. With the fallout from CD Projekt's troubled launch now well behind us, Piranha Games is ready to bring MechWarrior 5 to Steam and GOG this May 27th.
This month's launch comes with full cross-play between Epic, Steam, GOG and the game's new Xbox versions. This includes the game's Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC campaign, which will only require one player to own it to play cooperatively. An update also includes a bunch of new features, including squishy infantry units, a revamped UI, extreme weather conditions and a new campaign intro.
I fell off MechWarrior 5 faster than I'd liked, thanks to a repetitive mission structure and paper-thin narrative that couldn't hold up to fellow mech-smasher BattleTech. But it's still a bloody good mech sim—and if all you want is a big toybox full of stompy robots, MW5 will do you more than fine.
"MW5 is unmistakably a game about being a sandbox mech jockey, and the stories are just a low-quality veneer over some superb robot combat," Jon wrote in his MW5 review. "If you're here for a mech smashing simulator, this is the best new mech smashing simulator around. Here's hoping for more and better from a MechWarrior 6."
