Piranha have opened up the Mechwarrior Online beta to everyone, so if you want to hop into a giant battlemech and begin blasting random strangers with an array of pulse lasers, SRMs, and LRMs that’s a whole bunch easier than the alternative of building a suit out of cardboard and assaulting passersby.
To get into the beta you simply need to go here and sign your soul away.
I’ve only played a little of the beta so far, a quick few games over the weekend. The meta game, with all it’s free-to-play trappings, was a little clunky and uninformative but the game itself is pure Mechwarrior: the mechs have a sense of weight, there’s just the right balance of arcade and simulation, and heat, well, heat’s a very pressing issue – as it should be.
If you’d like to see it in action, this is a trailer from a few weeks back.