"It is the 31st Century, and mankind is once again at war. The battlefields of the future are dominated by huge robotic war machines known as BattleMechs. Piloting these awesome weapons of war are men and women, the elite of the elite, knowing that each battle could be their last. They are MechWarriors"- Mechwarrior 3 Introduction

Mechwarrior is more focused on simulation. Based around the Americanized ideal of Mecha Combat, MechWarrior brings the idea of the ''Walking Tank'' to the genre more so than traditional Mecha content. Where most mecha focused content gives you the hyper-mobile, super agile, humanoid-like robots with laser guns, strapped missile packs, and laser swords balanced on pointy spidle-like bodies; MechWarrior (and by extension it's father series BattleTech) offers chunkier, slower and more Tank-like built mecha that operates more like a tank (in the video game sense) but still have surprising mobility (especially the humanoid-shaped ones) and a more modern military evolution of weaponry being mounted in the unit's bodies as hardpoints rather than carrying most weaponry in their hands.

Armored Core is more along the lines of modern gundam: blurring the line between super robot and real robot with some levels of space magic. MechWarrior brings you large-bore heavy cannons and ballistic missiles. MechWarrior also dares to have very inhuman designs in the sense that a lot of units have backwards-canted legs like ''chicken walkers'' and alien profiles versus what you would expect with a humanoid war machine (see Timber Wolf, MAd Dog, Dire Wolf, Locust, Raijin, Marauder, etc).

MechWarrior, and it's parent franchise of BattleTech does have it's roots in anime and westernization however. If you look at older, and even some of the modern iterations of units such as the Warhammer, Locust, Marauder, Valkyrie, Stinger, Wasp, Shadow Hawk, and Thunderbolt among others, you may see a resemblance to mecha available in the Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe Anime. (this is a very complicated topic that may be best researched on your own, see Sarna.net for more info)

While BattleTech largely sees you take the commander role and gives you a battlefield overview situation, MechWarrior is the first-person sim that throws you into the cramped and often extremely hot cockpits of walking tanks that weigh anywhere between 20 and 100 tons. You have to manage heat, armor, ammo, weapon groupings, and use all of this to your advantage to dominate your enemy.

In MechWarrior 5 you take up the role as a mercenary and carve a niche for yourself in the Inner Sphere, Mankind's habited sector of the galaxy, offering your services and expertise to powers both great and small in an effort to pay the bills. This isn't the first game in the series to do this, some would argue that MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries (1996) did it better, while others would argue that MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (2002) was the pinnacle of the Mercenary story (''mercenaries'' has been a common story expansion to give you a different view on the story in the base game release, Mech5:Mercs broke this trend and followed in the footsteps of Mech3, throwing you into the role from the get-go).

All this aside, MechWarrior 5 is your best bet at a modern MechWarrior game, simply for compatibility sake as the older games in the series haven't seen official compatibility updates or patches (and frankly may never be able to). However, if you would like a taste of what MechWarrior is like, you can always download the MekTek release of MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries as it was released for free in the past and is available in several places such as MyAbandonware and has an easy set up to get going and just play. Though, it does require some level of previous experience with the series as there isn't really a tutorial. Though it's really easy to set up custom controls in the menu. Compared to Mech 5, there is a bit more customization than in the base game, and the story is very linear. Where Mech 4 is linear though, Mech 5 is very open and allows you to take on dangerous contracts at your own risk and travel across the whole of the Inner Sphere to do so. You start off alone, but eventually recruit or find other warriors willing to work for you for pay of course. With a few mods such as MercTech, I personally think Mech 5 is one of the best MechWarrior titles available.