Rather, what you get instead is a dose of very heavy blasting, and a surprising amount of strategy. Think of how in Quake, you can survive a diabolical world because you could hide, and choose your moment to attack carefully. In Mech 3, even armoured cars take a few heavy hits before exploding, and the enemy mechs require some seriously intense assaults before they fall over and die.

The strategy has several angles. For starters, it's possible to target particular elements of each mech, so that, say, you might want to shoot out a heavy rocket-launcher so that it relies on weaker lasers, or shoot out the legs for speed if you just want to plough on unhindered. But you can also enlist the help of resupply bases, and, more importantly, bring in team-mates to flank attackers using a very comprehensive 'wingmen' system.

It's also possible to customise your mech, but rather than spend money as you did in Mercenaries, you now have to make do with recovered parts from mechs torn asunder in the last mission. Do you now wish you'd left that rocket-launcher intact?

However it's still not quite enough to save a rather tired looking genre. Sure, Mech 3 is probably the best in its class (although Starsiege is certainly worth a look), but with the speed of the traditional first-person shooter, and even the elegance of recent soldier sims like Hidden and Dangerous, Mech Warrior 3 is beginning to look just a little metal fatigued.