First this game is FUN (once you learn the controls). Fun as in I was up playing this game waaay past my bedtime- my girlfriend and my work are suffering as I am having so much fun in fact that a chronic lack of sleep and loss of free time are beginning to take a toll.
As someone who once spent a fair amount of time gaming, and am only recently flirting (again) with gaming, what I'm finding is video games have become, dumber. Case in point, Splinter Cell. On the original XBox, it was a masterful stealth game and title that required thought if you were to complete. Now, it's a mindless scoot and shoot- just like nearly every other tittle I am finding. I stopped playing video games around the time the original Assassins Creed came out. I could not believe the repetitive nature of that title, nor could I understand the overwhelming critical praise. I had no idea at the time this was a harbinger of games to come. It seems the dumbing down, (numbing down), of the masses is in full swing but I digress.
In a cookie cutter "me too" gaming world, Steel Battalion stands out as something completely- different, but not just different for difference sake. Steel Battalion is a well balanced game that does an artful job of placing the gamer in a massive Vertical Tank. When you play Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor you actually feel like you are wielding a massive steel contraption in battle. You also feel a connection to your tank mates and when they die, you feel that too, like nothing else I've experienced in a sandbox video game before. As for the controls that seem to illicit such outrage from the main street press, once learned, they contribute to a sense of immersion that had the same command been tied to a button on your controller, never could or would. This is a game that must first be learned and then later, hours later, you begin to master the art of piloting a VT (Vertical Tank) in battle; how to take cover while under fire, how to plan your shots to hit the most vulnerable parts of your opponents Vertical Tank (VT) and all while staying cool under fire. Along the way you have fun and frustration, but for me at least, the game consumes me in nothing else but what I am doing in that moment and that?s the point. Games should be fun, they should allow us to exist in the moment, and for some of us, (perhaps too few of us), this means games must challenge us and take us places we have never been before. In order to do this each new title cannot be a simplistic reinterpretation of countless games before. And this brings me to my opening point, if the evolution of video games I've witnessed can be taken as the true state of not only gaming, but also human intelligence, the dumbing down of the masses is not merely an interesting or novel comment, it is a reality in full swing and with the full support of the media it seems.
