I played the Rimtech and Neuropa campaign.
I even played one or two multiplayer games on Gamespy. Twas super extra hard to get a game going, lots of disconnection issues, and when it happened, I got mauled before even getting my first combot.
I quite liked that game, it is not perfect but still rather well executed, and also original. While not all the originality in it really paid of (for instance the layer were a bit too disconnected, I was just playing on one layer at a time instead of having fight on all them at once interacting), at least it tried, and with a very enjoyable result. I'm getting tired of how nowadays ALL rts think they have to be a carbon copy of either C&C or WCII.
Unlike Pxtl & Erom, I had no problem with the health / damage ratio. Maybe it's just I always attacked with more than one combot.
I also disagree with j5mello, as with the recon pole it is very easy to locate the underground enemy buildings. There's even a long range recon pole cannon, that make it even more an ease to dispatch them! And well, if only the underground layer remains to be cleared, directing all your economy toward there you get an unstoppable tank army in a couple minute. Maybe like too many RTS players you didn't think about getting multiple factories where needed and producing en masse. I remember a hugelong time ago, at a friend who was playing TA campaign, I enqueued five Jethro and he was like "
zomg five at once??? You are crazy! That's is so much to much!". I'm sure it's common trend, especially with all the bad RTS where it's the only possible way to play, to severly limit your production instead of getting a TA-like explosive expansion.
Unlike Krogoth86 I found the control pretty ok. Granted, they are not as powerful as Spring's control, nor even TA ones. However, discarding TA and TA-derivative, Metal Fatigue controls are in the top best RTS control. Even today you have game with less control. And indeed, Metal Fatigue control and way of playing bears some similarity to TA, like having a continuous economic system.
The graphics are of course not as cool-FX-saturated as 2008's games, however, beside the Milagro and some factory which are too cubic, they were excellent for the time, and are still bearable nowaday. There's all sort of jet boots flare, translucent shields, lightsabers,
...
As for the teching up, no way, severing enemy's combot limb, grabbing them with a cons, bringing them to a tech center to study, and then mass producing it was awesome!! (Or you could also mount the severed foe limb at once on one of your own combot, the good old immediate reward vs delayed greater reward dilemna.)
My own qualm about Metal Fatigue is about the way ressources are gathered. At first I went like, bah, lava pool get depleted too quick, the only sustainable source of energy is solar. So I just quickly wiped the asteroid plane, and massed solar panel there (come to think of it, the lack of grid when placing building made maximising space use when placing solar tedious). And I did a whole campaign like that, worked but was rather boring. Only when re-taking the game later for a second campaign did I notice that hunting underground lava pool first gave me a much stronger economy much faster. So after all maybe the economy is ok too and it was just me who took a bit to grasp it fully.
Oh yeah and also the non-combot unit, and especially the planes, are too worthless. Undergound plane forced the use of vehicle, but since combot can have wings or jetboots (which I used on all my armies), plane felt very superfluous. Though by playing only the campaign, maybe I have a flawed view of the balance.
Picture related:
Maybe there was a real counter in MP, with the remote-strike stuff, since they couldn't fire if mobile... dunno. It's a game that never seemed to catch fire for MP play, so I doubt if those nooks and crannies ever got fully explored.