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	Title: (Reviews) BattleTech
	Author: Len Poggiali
	Source: COMPUTE!'s Gazette, v8(2)
	Date: February 1990
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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Infocom's *BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception* is a cross between a
land-craft driving simulation, an *Empire Strikes Back*-style arcade challenge, and
an *Ultima*-like role-playing game.

As Jason Youngblood, a thirty-first-century Lyran officer, your first
chore is to learn the intricacies of piloting one of several BattleMech war
machines. At the Pacifica Training School, you'll encounter simulated hostile craft
that must be destroyed before you can advance to the next phase of your education.
Completing this segment can be quite a chore, particularly in iater stages
when you are facing three enemy Mechs to your one.

Between practice missions, you'll spend your time visiting a variety of locations
within the training area. You may chat with friends in the lounge, enroll
in specialized combat classes at the citadel, buy and sell stocks at the
Corn-Star station with the hope of making money to purchase items at the various
shops, or go to your barracks to catch up on your sleep.

Before you get too comfortable, you are catapulted into the real world
as the result of an enemy raid on your base. If you are skillful and lucky, you'll
escape in the Chameleon, the sturdiest and deadliest Mech available. Although
not as maneuverable as its lighter cousins and prone to overheating, the
Chameleon is equipped with heavy armor and a multitude of weapons, including
lasers, missiles, and machine guns. Additional conventional and high-tech
armaments may be purchased in towns along your route, providing you have
the funds. Parking and repair facilities are also at your disposal.

Traveling cross-country, you visit numerous locations (even video stores),
enlist allies, discover hidden valuables, battle foes, and hopefully save the
planet from the scourge of the loathsome Kurita warriors. At times, you'll
engage enemy infantry. Without benefit of a Mech, these infantry groups can
be dispatched quickly. Similarly, should your Mech be destroyed and
you are ejected from it, you'll be a sitting duck until you can commandeer
another vehicle.

Easing your chore somewhat is a user-friendly control system that consists
of a series of menus, all accessible via a joystick or the keyboard. From the
main menu, you may adjust a variety of game settings: You can set combat
speed, inspect or heal your character, load or save a game, or view an
overhead map. Later menus allow you to select types of movement and weapons,
scan friendly and hostile units, decide whether to let the computer hold up
your end of the battle or to do the fighting yourself, engage in combat, and
choose among a host of other options.

The game screen consists of three areas. Depending on the situation, the
upper left window features movement directions, battle reports, or animated
sequences. Characters' attributes, represented by bar graphs, are presented in
the lower left comer of the screen. During battle, this box contains combat
commands. The right window, the largest of the three, displays attractive, 3-D
overhead views of the figures and the scrolling countryside.

<blockquote style="border: 1px solid; background-color: var(--mdgrey); text-align: center; padding: 0.25em 0.5em;">

BattleTech *is a unique cross between a simulation, an arcade
challenge, and a roleplaying game.*

</blockquote>

Occasionally, this scenery is replaced by text, recounting meetings and
other events in Jason's life. As good as the descriptions of Jason's nightmare or
the break-in at the mayor's house are, there is no way for the player to enter
into the story.

The absence of this interaction makes BattleTech a far cry from Infocom's
classic text adventures or even the company's newer graphics-oriented
line of narrative/puzzle-solving entertainment.

The program comes without copy protection. However, to enter the training
mode, all candidates must pass a test, which consists of correctly labeling
the parts of a WSP-1A WASP reconnaissance Mech. A correctly labeled
diagram appears only in the 20-page instruction booklet.

Six games may be saved on a backup copy of the flip side of the program
disk. Duplicating the original is a timeconsuming process, as are the many
disk loads required during play. Drawbacks aside, *BattleTech*'s designers have
blended a number of genres and, by doing so, have created something unique.
Players searching for new worlds to explore, futuristic vehicles to pilot, and
battles to fight need look no further.

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception<br>
*Infocom<br>
Distributed by Mediagenic<br>
3885 Bohannon Dr.<br>
Menlo Park, CA 94025<br>
$39.95
