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Author
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Topic: Review: Steel Beasts
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Anti-Plato
Member
Member # 6481
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posted 09-25-2000 05:05 PM
    
I know it's stange, but I actually purchased and played M1TP2 after owning Steel Beasts for a couple of weeks, and I must say that M1 is sorely disappointing. I don't care what is bemoaned about the graphics in SB; still shots of the game in reviews simply do not capture the sense of depth present in the terrain rendering engine. The thermal sights in SB (of which in my mind, the equivelant presentation of the thermal view in M1TP2 made me think I was playing older Microprose products like Gunship 2000 or Silent Service 2)look almost like any night combat footage you've seen of Desert Storm. Yes, the European battlefield perpetuates a giant golf course, and yes the woodland camo looks very peculiar in the desert scenarios, but the explosions and sparks and ricochets in M1TP2 look absolutely contrived and Gi Joe-ish (Hasbro) in comparison to SB. You can laze targets through the mesh of the trees and thread a shot through the branches to dispatch enemy vehicles when they leave a precarious part of themselves ever slightly exposed. One very impressive aspect is the sim's vector physics. Shoot an enemy tank in the side hull while it is racing down a road, and he might fish tail slightly and careen sideways before coming to a stop. Once I even saw a BMP roll through a group of dismounted infantry in an effort to get out of the way of being shot while its brakes failed to stop its forward intertia in time from making my job all the more easier. My only real concession to game play is not the lack of air units, but the over riding tendency of the TC to get my tank killed, and this happens A LOT. From the unbuttoned view, the TC can spot an enemy on the other side of a ridge in front of your gun in a defilade position, but which the tank gun (which is lower than the TC) can't see and thus take under fire. The TC, seemingly unaware of this, will slew the gun at this enemy and will stubbornly battle the gunner for control of the gun and thus prevent him from firing at the targets which are sneaking around to your flanks and are much more of an immediate threat. I've been killed more often by infantry and IFV's because the TC always assigns a higher prioriy to a tank which can't be killed. So much for the Military's philosophy of empowerment! I kept trying to button up the TC to prevent him from spotting units that are not a real threat at the moment because of the terrain blocking all line of sight between us and the enemy, but darn if he doesn't jump right back up there and start the madness all over again when I switch back to the gunner's postion. The battle map is also quite nebulous; there is no intuitive way to look for hull down positions and really gauge distances between one landmark and another-what may look like a large distance on the map is actually point blank range for a tank, and often you get killed because on the map it did not look like the enemy's weapons could reach that far. All in all, the game is considerably realistic because it seems so difficult at first. And in case there is any illusion about the Abram's invincibility, well, you'd best disabuse yourself of that real quick. Infantry hidden in the forests can knock you around all day before you ever even know where the shots are coming from. Even the plain rifle men fight like old school communists and will try and plink the tank's more delicate instruments when caught out in the open even though there is virtually no chance for them to survive. It's a lot of fun to see their tracers come at you and bounce off the hull like ping pong balls shot out of a super charged automatic tennis server-the effect is great through the thermal sights. Experience teaches the player that slow and steady wins the race and not flat out speed with guns blazing; you definetely have to keep your wits about you at all times, which often tends to break down when the lead starts flying. At extremely close ranges, when looking eyeball to eyeball at an OPFOR tank through the GAS while both of us are frantically loading the next round through the breech to get off the first kill shot (seems like an eternity before that angelic "Up!"), I can really imagine the enemy crew desperately working inside there half crazed from fear as I watch the OPFOR tank's gun lowering in my direction. Ultimately, in almost anyway I can imagine, SB serves up the right combination of audio, visual and gameplay nuances which gave me the "I was there" sense that M1TP2 failed to deliver.
Posts: 95 | From: San Mateo, CA, USA | Registered: Aug 2000 | IP: Logged
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Cookie
Member
Member # 836
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posted 09-25-2000 06:00 PM
I agree, this sentence: Sound: 9 - Nothing spectacular but fine left me a bit wondering. For me the sound in this sim is one of the best I have ever heard. The graphics may not be top notch (they do get their job done though, don´t be mistaken), but IMHO the sounds are without doubt just plain awesome.This is one of the sims that you play, and when you turn the computer off you realize that you just spent three hours in front of the monitor. The immersion you will experience with this masterpiece is on the same level as high quality sims like Falcon 4, even though the technical details like graphics may not be as perfect. This sim has atmospere though, more than plenty actually. ------------------
You can run, but... why die tired? Visit me at the Flightsim Cafe
Posts: 685 | From: Dortmund, Germany | Registered: Nov 1999 | IP: Logged
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Kurt Plummer
Member
Member # 358
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posted 09-25-2000 09:00 PM
I'd still like to see a different, historical-lead+slewable rangegating, sight mechanism or at least the ability to 'mil-a-pop' the sight up or down a notch, indepedent of joystick primary X-Y.I finally got my Speedkeys to recognize my F-16FS through all the misery but I gotta tell'ya driving that big stick one handed while groping the keyboard like Bach on a Bad Hair Day AND trying to adjust for targets going up and down through what feels like a moon crater of hillocks with you in the center of the caldera is a bit of a stone beach. But I can't begin to say _how sweet it is_ getting your first 90% on the range, under 12 seconds average...;-)
Kurt Plummer
Posts: 672 | From: | Registered: Sep 1999 | IP: Logged
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MonsterZero
Member
Member # 5722
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posted 09-28-2000 06:48 PM
You may say I'm silly, but after seing how horrible the website of Shrapnel Games is I'm afraid to send them my credit card number, despite the fact that I'm really looking forward to testing the game.The website appears as if Shrapnel games were located in some dude's dirty basement. Shrapnel Games, have mercy on us! [This message has been edited by MonsterZero (edited 09-28-2000).]
Posts: 442 | From: Worth, IL USA | Registered: Jul 2000 | IP: Logged
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MonsterZero
Member
Member # 5722
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posted 09-29-2000 09:03 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Richard:
So what exactly don't you like about the site?
Now I have been thrown off course. I took a look at the website to answer your question in detail and realized that now it looks quite different. Before the only distinct and recognizable detail was that horizonatal green strip with a photo of a Tiger tank. Everything else was a mess of proken links! A number of things could have happened:
-You updated the site after my article
-I ran into forgotten chunks of the website that remained in the nooks and crannies of your server(s) despite being replaced by other pages (old and useless pages may remain in a search engine for a while and I used Yahoo to find you)
-I experienced temporary networking problems As of now the site looks boring but appears far more functional than the last time I saw it. Nevertheless, the "Add to Shopping Cart" button for Steel Beast returns a broken link in IE 5.5. It does work in Netscape, but you guys should take a look at it...This is what it returns: https://secure.gorealtime.com/cgi-bin/cart32.exe/9194618513-AddItem Human beings are vain. One of the primary reasons we buy Ferraris and Lamorghinis is because they...look like Ferraris and Lamorghinis. Take the engine and supension of a Diablo (a marvelous piece of Italian engineering), cover it with the body of a Ford Escort and let's see who's gona pay you $300,000.00 for the thing. [This message has been edited by MonsterZero (edited 09-29-2000).]
Posts: 442 | From: Worth, IL USA | Registered: Jul 2000 | IP: Logged
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