And, of course, will appeal to the glutton for punishment in us.ĭifficulty and all, this game might take you a little over an hour. Mastering the diverse levels and finding the difficulty becoming manageable is satisfying.
There are also parts where you’re on vehicles, such as riding a boat or hanging off an aircraft. While I found it a bit awkward to use in the heat of the moment, it made for some clever platforming. Returning to compliments, Steel Assault has some variety I appreciate, like the zipline. But, it is a game that finds its initial charm sharing space with annoyance in short order. Which isn’t the case, as the presentation shows far too much care. Perhaps the biggest blunder is a lack of co-op! How many retro arcade classics have Zenovia Interactive played? This inexplicable absence makes Steel Assault feel less like an arcade homage and more like a rushed release. So again, an idea’s conveyed with no follow-up another disappointment. Speaking of missing options, the PR I received for this game mentioned that it “promotes players to keep trying to beat their own times.” Yet, the game does not seem to record times. Maybe if it let you keep score in true arcade fashion, it’d be more palatable, but that option is sadly missing. Calling it arcade conveys something it is not, so even as a gag, it’s tough not to be disappointed. Also, the arcade manager who set those dip switches would likely get canned. A single-life to beat the game?! If this were actually in an arcade, you’d spend your whole roll of quarters in minutes. There’s an arcade mode, which I presume is a troll attempt from the devs. Very Easy feels more akin to easy to normal for this genre, so it wasn’t long before I changed to that. I also suspect the difficulty options are based to a greater extent on their experience, not playtesters. It quickly becomes apparent that Zenovia Interactive had steep difficulty as a priority. You won’t get sick of these highly listenable tracks, even when you hear them repeatedly.Īnd hear them repeatedly, you will. The soundtrack is pretty near perfect for this type of game. The overall visual presentation does little to generate complaints. There was a bit where I fell through the ground, but that was more an exception than a rule, where backgrounds are foreground blended. To describe specific scenes in a game just five chapters long might be borderline spoiler territory, but everything impresses from start to finish. The presentation’s, in a word, wonderful with a capital W! Elaborate pixel art and copious vibrant colors make me long to take a break from the action and stare at the screens for a spell. In truth, calling these visuals great might be selling them short. A world that, despite its post-apocalyptic status, looks great. How many arcade-type games have noteworthy plots? You play as a whip-wielding soldier in a sci-fi world.
But for a side-view action game of this style, the story is ultimately not that important as it’s largely unnecessary. The plot isn’t all that interesting, or memorable for that matter. A broader appeal Steel Assault probably doesn’t have.
It also brings difficulty that, despite some admirable efforts, might only have genre enthusiasts buying it. The CRT filter/curvature and border art can also be customized even further to make this look even more like an SNES title.Steel Assault brings 90s style arcade action to the Nintendo Switch, with a first-class audio/visual package. On top of that, the detailed pixelated artwork and amazing FM-synthesized tunes, particularly the opening theme, fired off all of my gaming nostalgia fixes. One of the best features is that the game is in 4:3 aspect ratio, which is just another way to make this genuinely look and feel like a 16-bit title. I wish Arcade Mode had a 3-life system to make it feel more arcade-like, but this is still a great addition for those old school players. Thankfully, Arcade Mode is an option for masochists, and this is a one-life run where if you die you start back from the beginning. It is significantly more difficult on Expert, but it is still possible to clear the hardest difficulty in under an hour. Even though I did die quite a few times on my first playthrough, I still cleared the game in 44 minutes. In Steel Assault, that pressure is eliminated, and the game’s play time suffers tremendously. When you run out of lives and continues, you have to start all over again. In older NES and SNES games, part of the charm is the difficulty. However, as great as the checkpoint system is, it also feels like the game’s biggest problem.
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