Steel Battalion: Too Hardcore to Handle

A few weeks ago at a Friday Games@GAMBIT event at work, the theme was something like "games with giant robots that FEEL giant."  Having eluded me for the 9 years since its 2002 release due to its loft price tag, I was thrilled at the chance to play Steel Battalion.  And so I did.

With any luck you can see the combination of fear and excitement in my eyes.  I was immediately hooked.  Later that night, out of curiosity more than anything, I decided to see how much these things go for on eBay.  It was still a couple hundred dollars for the whole setup, but that's actually far less than I thought it would be.  So I impulse bought it, and it arrived at my desk shortly afterward.  It was a bit of an unwieldy box to carry ~1.5mi to my apartment, but after that, I had it.  Mine.

Steel Battalion (XBOX)

I LOVE hard games.  That amazing feeling I get when accomplishing something very challenging is really one of the driving forces of my gaming life.  This pushed that ideal to its limits.  And how did it do?  Well, it kicked my candy ass back to the easy games I like to play, like Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be The Guy, and Kaizo Mario World.

I've been playing through the game on ROOKIE.  The lowest difficulty setting.  But the fact is, it would be very difficult to operate a walking tank in the heat of a battle.  And this game strives (and does an awesome job!) to be a real simulation of what that experience would be like.  I'm willing to bet that once the Japanese perfect mechs in real life, those who played this game will be the ones that survive.

I feel I should describe this game a bit to those who are unfamiliar with it.  Well, as you may have caught on, this game involves piloting a big walking tank (vertical tank, or VT) in a futuristic war.  First, let's look at the controller:

Controller summary

Yes, this section's long.  Feel free to skip it if you're not curious.  If anything, the length required to briefly explain each of the buttons should convey my point well enough.

Yes, this is one monster controller.  (This picture is actually a first generation controller with green buttons, mine has blue.  My camera just sucks so I Google'd.)  Huge part of why this wasn't a commercial success, I'd wager.  It has something in the vicinity of 40 buttons, two joysticks, and three foot pedals.  Let's take a closer look at things.

First, the left block.  On the left, you've got a lever to use your tank's manual transmission.  No clutch or anything involved, but the gears have the acceleration/top speed sort of tradeoff like real life.  The next lever control's your mech's heading, so moving it left makes your walking mechanism turn left.  And you'll note that there is a small joystick on top.  This is used to control the direction of your view.  You have a 180 degree field of view about your mech's heading, so this can be used to look not-straight-ahead.  Clicking the joystick centers your view.  Next we have 5 toggle switches.  These are part of the initialization sequence, but more on that later.

The center block.  First, I'll point out the dial.  This is used to select your communication frequency.  Notable frequencies: 9 o'clock goes back to Argus, your CO, and 12 o'clock calls Wagon Master, used for ordering supplies.  We also have some communication buttons above that.  This controls what you say on the radio.  The first calls someone, or acknowledges their call.  The second asks for a repeat.  The third requests medical supplies.  Those are the only ones I've used.  Now, we've got a group of 9 buttons on the side.  I haven't had to use F1, F2, and F3, but allegedly they're mission specific things.  There's a button to detach empty fuel tanks (lighter and better fuel efficiency, but a supply chopper can't refill it).  FSS, forecast shooting system, takes into account enemy velocity when auto targeting.  Override is like overclocking your mech.  You burn triple the fuel, but you go FAST.  Manipulator trades your sub weapon for a cute little robot arm, which can be used to collect items, open doors, and torture cows.  Night scope activates night vision.  Line color change changes the color of your HUD so that you can see them better against variously colored environments.  And finally, we have 6 buttons at the bottom.  Washing clears the dirt off your windshield.  Extinguisher puts out cockpit fires.  Chaff messes up homing missiles with a grenade.  Main changes your main weapon, and Sub behaves similarly.  Magazine change reloads your main weapon.

The right and final block.  We've got yet another joystick here.  This guy controls where you're aiming (so your direction of movement, sight, and aim are all different).  He's got three buttons, a lock on button, main weapon button, and sub weapon trigger.  We've got 6 buttons beneath that.  You've got a multimonitor which can display a few things, like lock on view, rear view, etc.  Open/close toggles that monitor's appearance.  Mode select changes which view appears there.  There's a button to toggle the zoom on your mini-map.  And there's a button to change the mode of the mini map screen to various functions, like mech stats and such.  At the bottom, you can zoom the main view in or out.  We then have some buttons used at startup, the cockpit hatch, ignition, and start.  Finally, we have the infamous eject button.

We've also got three foot pedals!  The rightmost pedal is gas.  Middle one is brake.  Leftmost is sort of like a jump.  You can use it to jump forward, backward, or sideways, depending on your gear, whether or not you're pressing the gas, and the state of the rotation lever on the left block.

Right into the action

Phew.  With all that, the game gives you a comprehensive tutorial, right?  Nope, you will get thrown right into the heat of battle.  Shy of using these exact words, the game's instructions amount to "RTFM."  And that manual is pretty beefy.

37 pages, all dense in information.  It's primarily in fiction as well, which is pretty awesome.  If you play this game, prepare to get very friendly with this book.

Startup sequence

If there's anything that really hooked me into the game, it's THIS.  You are responsible for starting up your mech after you sit in the cockpit.  It's slow, and you do it every mission, but I wouldn't change it one bit.  Just feeling that satisfying "click" of the toggle switches.  I was won over instantly.  And it does NOT get old.

You need to close the cockpit, and then start the ignition.  The mech's operating system then takes some time to boot, and the controller does a pretty sequence of flashing lights.  You then need to flip the toggle switches I mentioned before, and finally hit the start button to get things rolling.

Harsh consequences

So this game strives to be an accurate simulation.  In real life, if you die in battle, that's it, no extra lives.  Steel Battalion believes that to be an important part of the simulation.  If your VT takes enough damage, it might be moments from exploding.  When this happens, an adrenaline surge takes over as you dive for the plastic-shielded eject button.  If you don't make it out in time, your pilot dies, and your save file is deleted.  High stakes, there's no casually playing this game.  But perhaps you have amazing ejecting reflexes; it's not actually that hard to hit the button in time.  Well, you just wasted a mech, and someone has to pay for it.  Use up enough money, and you get fired...and your save file gets deleted.  The game isn't very nice about it, either.

Particularly that last frame.  What the hell??  None of these are idle words, your save file is gone.  I hate patronizing games which try to baby you and make you feel good about yourself, and this game is as far away from those ideas as you can be.  And you know what, I LIKED it.  I lost, the game had the right to call me a loser.  Next time I beat that mission, I got to feel such satisfaction.  The game told me I sucked, but guess what, I'm beating you.  I would much rather a game taunt me like this.  In Donkey Kong Country Returns, I HATED that pig which tried to get you to skip a level if you failed too many times.  And I'm playing Ocarina of Time 3D now.  Content-wise, it's a carbon copy of the original, but they DID add some patronizing elements.  No, Navi, I don't want to consult the green-glowing, happy-looking "Shiekah Stone" to figure out what I'm supposed to do next.  I know damn well what I'm doing, and I'll deviate from the main quest and do side quests if I please.  (Also, stop telling me to take a break, I'll tell you when I've had enough!)  It's like being lost or challenged is a bad thing these days...

Simulation

I keep mentioning that this game is designed to be a mech simulation.  I, personally, haven't really played many flight sims or realistic driving games.  But, in this game, the experience was so rich.  Very little takes you out of the world (I had some complaints about some of the apparently arbitrary time limits, but that was minimal).  I was really in the world, and the game did everything it could to maintain that illusion.  Even the instruction manual is primarily in fiction.  An apparent gaming trend today, pushed by all three major consoles, involves the removal or minimization of the controller.  However, this game, on the other end of the spectrum, achieves things that I believe are not possible with that sort of interface.  So much of the Steel Battalion play experience is tactile.  Immersion skyrockets.  Don't get me wrong, some types of games work with motion controls.  And I wouldn't buy a giant controller for every game (just this and rhythm games, apparently).  But the tactile experience with this game was quite unique for me.  They're making a new Steel Battalion.  Apparently it will use the Kinect.  It's currently unclear whether the Kinect will be the ONLY input, or it will supplement another giant controller.  Despite the logistic nightmare, I'm really holding out for the latter.

Gamer depression

I was quite bummed after losing my second pilot, I got pretty far.  I wanted to remind myself that I'm really not a horrible gamer, so I made this video of me playing Mega Man 10!  I'm doing the hard mode/buster only/no damage challenge.  I now watch this whenever I need a morale boost.  I show all 8 battles at once, so I recommend full screen 720p.  Solar Man (top) and Nitro Man (bottom left) are the best performances, if I say so myself.

What's next?

Well, I still haven't beaten the game.  I'm on my third pilot.  Both of my previous ones exhausted funds.  I'm almost at the end of the first campaign.  Money's getting tight though, so I'm nervous.  I can destroy the capitol building, but I haven't been able to beat the Juggernaut.  It's either its rail gun, melee flame torch, or some EMP thing it has that makes my mech shut down.  If I could just get a couple rail gun shots off...

I recently bought Steel Battalion: Line of Contact.  That's the multiplayer version of the game.  Two people at work also have Steel Battalion, so I hope we get a LAN game going VERY soon.

I REALLY recommend trying out this game.  If anyone I know finds themselves in my neighborhood, I'd be more than happy to set this monster up.