Ristar Raynier recharges in the city's safe zone
While I was thinking about the upcoming appearance of the robotic warfare expert, I happened to stumble across this video, part of a weekly broadcast for a Second Life Battletech community. It was darkly comic and suggested an amazing depth of roleplay, so I had to know more. That led me to Double X Island [direct SLURL teleport at this link], a combat roleplaying sim with a blown out city for bot-versus-bot warfare. You purchase your mechs in the lobby/staging area above the city, which also contains a map room that tracks the progress of different teams/players. The bots themselves are diverse and very cool, burnt steel carapaces bristling with weaponry. The game field itself is very nicely designed, full of nooks and corners, and all the multi-level locations city combat provides. (Acting as an embedded warbot reporter for awhile, I followed one mech as it rumbled down a stretch of wrecked highway as it exchanged gunfire with a bot on the street below.) The mechs are the creation of Xxander Snook, and according to Fleche Xeno, the community's media promoter, community boasts about 300 active players, each of whom have paid L$1000 or more to buy the Battletech suits required to play. (Many players, Xeno noted, spend a lot more to trick out their mechs.)
Fans of battle mech gaming will definitely want to check it out. You can start playing with a free, low level mech available at the staging area, or just acquire an Observation Bot avatar, to watch the action from the sidelines. Whatever you do, don't go down into the playing without properly dressed as a mech, or you may be politely but firmly shooed off the battlegrounds by a warbot armed with tactical nukes.
Comments