Mechwarrior 5: Clans - Ghost Bear: Flash Storm - Beware the Ghost Bear's Claws
Despite some misgivings, I found myself quite enjoying Mechwarrior 5: Clans when I covered it last year. So Piranha Games’ announcement of the first DLC pack for it had me both excited and concerned. Excited to see what would be next for their telling of the Clan Invasion, but concerned that those misgivings might not be addressed.
Mechwarrior 5: Clans – Ghost Bear: Flash Storm takes place alongside the base game, specifically starting during the tail end of the year-long pause to the Invasion. This time around, the story focuses on Clan Ghost Bear, and their Silverroot Keshik, an elite squad serving as the honour guard for the Clan’s leadership and taking the lead on a campaign to boost Clan Ghost Bear’s position in the race towards claiming Terra (ie. Earth).
This new perspective – not only that of a Clan with differing values, but also that of more experienced Mechwarriors resulted in a story I found quite engrossing. Watching this team adapt to a new member being forced upon them, whilst navigating the challenges of their assignments offered something a little more personal compared to those experiences from the base game.
This all takes place over a 12 mission campaign – which is where I found Flash Storm to be a bit of a mixed bag. I found it offered some great set pieces – one early mission has you fighting on the surface of a warship, defending it from another Clan’s attacks, while another has you participate on a raid to secure an orbital platform. I appreciate how both of these resulted in more confined combat than compared to the missions taking place planet-side which means formations and Mech positioning because incredibly important to avoid friendly fire.
For all the great set-pieces and planetary battles, the missions in this DLC pack still suffer from the same design flaws as seen in the base game. That is, missions are lengthy and rely too much upon thrusting overwhelming numbers of opposing forces at you. So the typical plan for success was to deploy with the heaviest Mechs you could afford once again.
Which isn’t as easy as it sounds, thanks to Clan Ghost Bear’s position story-wise. Unlike the base game, where unlocked Mechs were always available to buy, this time around, you’ll get a random selection added to the Marketplace after each mission, which means you’re at the mercy of the RNG to see if a particular Mech is available to buy.
So even if you’ve got the cash for them, it can take longer than you’d like to get the Mechs you desire to fill out your squad to take advantage of the drop limit. Of course, this makes those missions that bit more challenging as you might just have Mechs that can’t handle when your opponents are throwing at you, making squad management that bit more important to ensure you’re not at too much of a disadvantage for the next operation.
Flash Storm adds one cool piece of the BattleTech universe into the mix, and that’s Elementals. You don’t control these squads of Clan infantry directly, but in most missions, you’ll have a squad attached that you can issue attack orders to. You’ll also find rival clans deploying them too, and the sight of one attaching itself to your own Mech in order to cripple it can be frightening, requiring some quick action to dislodge them!
It’s a shame this side of them isn’t used that heavily – it’s a unique type of enemy threat, but with Clan versus Clan action being only a small part of the game’s story, it’s the breaks, I guess.
One other area of Flash Storm I feel divided on is the boss encounters. Most of these pit you up against the same gunships which appeared in the base game, but there’s also an encounter with a new armoured vehicle, which offers a neat challenge, but it doesn’t stick right with me on feeling appropriate for the game. Maybe it’s just how these encounters are placed at the end of those longer missions.
Overall, Flash Storm is a solid DLC pack for Mechwarrior 5: Clans. You get a campaign that isn’t ridiculously long, a bunch of new Mechs to play with, and some neat mechanics with the inclusion of Elementals. It doesn’t do much to fix the issues I had with the original game, though I still had an enjoyable enough time stomping about in my Mech, laying waste to those who refuse to accept the rule of the Clans.
Mechwarrior 5: Clans Ghost Bear Flash Storm was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
