40 buttons. Three pedals. Big price sticker. No, this isn't a piece of construction machinery, but it is Steel Battalion, one of the most ambitious and pricy games to ever hit the market. A little information for the few of you who don't know what this game is all about. Steel Battalion places you in the cockpit of a giant Vertical Tank (VT), aka, a Mech. You see and do everything from a cockpit view while manipulating a huge controller and pedals to do your thing. You are in charge of everything from blasting the enemy to the mundane like washing the window when you get dirt on it.

The game takes place with you as a member of the PRF, or Pacific Rim Forces, which are out to defend themselves against an evil regime that is taking places over. Pretty much, you are given missions then go out and complete them by stomping up the enemy.

Graphics, Bleh

I am not sure if this was intentional, but the visuals in the game are not all that hot. For some reason, everything is really blurry. It is so blurry in cases that I found it difficult to see smaller vehicles, like tanks. And since tanks cause damage to you, and all you get is a generic box around their location, you end up missing because you have to use the box to aim because seeing the thing is next to imposible. Larger vehicles look really bland. Nothing special in terms of models here.

Environments are just as bland to look at. Trees are dark and drab, the landscape is dark and drab. Everything is just dark and drab, even the water. It never seems to be sunny out, always cloudy. Buildings are square and grey. Not a whole lot too look at.

Effects don't fare much better, either. Some effects are nice, like tracers when you fire your bullets and the water/dirt effects that get on your windshield. The odd one, though, is the absolutely ugly fire effects. They look like cut-outs and barely fare better than the explosion effects in Half-Life.

The only real positive here is the cockpit view is clear, crisp, and the map funcion is easy to see.

For an XBox game, this sure is ugly.

Gameplay Tough To Get Into

The problem with Steel Battalion is that there is no tutorial function. All you get is a large, convoluted manual that you quite literally have to memorize and the function of all those buttons and dials to really understand what is going on. Of course, that feels more like school and most gamers would just like to jump into the action. The game starts out with you THINKING you are going to get a tutorial, but 30 seconds later, the base is destroyed and the guy who is supposed to teach you is taken out of the picture. It is up to you to figure out the mess of controls. The game does give you a hint now and again, mainly by button flashes. Problem with the flashing button method is that, beyond starting the thing up, taking your eyes off the screen is death. So, you don't really know what to do about the situation without looking down at the panel and searching out the flashing button, and sometimes you may walk into something you didn't want to, like a river (where you sink and drown), or standing still and getting picked off easily. Luckily there isn't a clutch to work with, or I would have been screwed for a LONG time.

The destructable environments should have been played with a bit more than they were. Destructables are limited to what is specifically scripted to do so. A few buildings and a bridge from what I have seen. Otherwise, invincible everything. No craters, and you don't even knock over trees when wading through a forest. Like they just pass through you or I just happened to be such a maneuvering master that I missed them all entirely.

Where is the Audio?

Sounds are VERY sparse in this game. You get a few shot and hit effects, and one when you fall over. You can buy a boombox and play some songs, though pretty horrible if you ask me. The voice acting, when there is some, is particularly bad. Conversations involve one character speaking, a 10 second gap, then the second one responding. Sure, it may have 5.1 surround, but there is hardly anything to listen to it doesn't make that feature worth much.

I Like Hard, But This Is Rediculous

I like hard. I simply loath the fact that next-gen games tend to be 6 hour cakewalks. But, there truly is a limit. What games should do is build the challenge. Start easy, build it up at a decent pace, letting you learn the ropes before being handed the challenges. Steel Battalion does not do that. They lay it on thick and don't let up, right from the start, well, Mission 3. Missions 1 and 2 are a bit too easy, having you deal with, in mission 1, two brain-dead VT enemies and in mission 2, inanimate shore guns and a few transport trucks that don't fire back. It starts in mission 3, where you have to run a gauntlet of artillery shelling you from top a cliff, one that you have to get on and take down the pieces, that can fight back. You are alone (that moron wingman never got up there), and have to handle 3 at once.

Of course, that would be fun, IF the game didn't delete itself when you died. You heard me right, you die, you start over from the very beginning. Again, no big deal, you have an eject button. BUT, the only decent indication that you need to eject is right there on the control panel. The button flashes. On screen, the thing flashes red, but unfortunately, it means more than one thing. Red flashes means you are being attacked, engine is on fire, or you are about to explode. Of course, the enemy is always attacking you when the thing is red, so looking down is normally a bad idea. If a flashing "EJECT" were to flash on screen as well, it would have been nicer. Still, deleting my game is just wrong.

This game would be paralleled to someone handing you a manual for an M1 tank, putting you in it with ZERO training, and telling you to go out and kill the enemy in a war. You die, that is it. No continues. You are dead. Training and a less steep learning curve would have made this game wonderful.

Cost Prohibitive

$200. That alone is a big downer for most gamers. You can pick up Steel Battalion, or get 4-5 full titles. Hard choice.

Bottom Line

Steel Battalion turned out to be a personal dissapointment. After first laying my eyes on that beautiful controller, I fell in love. Unfortunately, the game never fully taught me how to use it correctly and was more concerend with getting me killed to delete my save game that offer any real enjoyment. The game felt like a real war, and real wars are no fun. To tell the truth, I played this game up to mission 4, but after having my save deleted for the 5th time, it was time to return the game to the store (thank God for EB's lax return policy) and picked up 5 good titles.

There are people out there who would enjoy this title, but I feel they have to fit the following two categories:

1. Be able to drop $200 like it was nothing.

2. Be a SERIOUS mech addict.

Otherwise, the frustration and the cost are much too high to make this a decent purchase for the masses.