Steel assault trailer how to#
Steel assault trailer trial#

If you end up in the drink, you can hop out, but your jump diminishes each time you hop out, and, particularly in the acid, it’s easy to rack up damage. Stages with water are unnecessarily exhausting, also.

When I reached the top, I jumped and what looked like solid ground was just the background and I fell to my death. There is a section where I had to jump on descending rocks to climb a waterfall. It’s exhausting using whatever mental energy I had left to figure out what was actually part of the level. I had trouble figuring out what I could jump on. On some stages, the background and the foreground blended too well. Ultimately, it would have been nice if the character was a little larger or the camera was closer. I frequently caught myself squinting to help ease the sharp edges, so I turned on the bilinear filter to smooth the pixels. They’re highly detailed with bright colors and dark shadows, but the graphics are too pixelated for my eyes. You’re on the streets, you’re on the rooftops, in the sky, in jungles, and of course, there’s an elevator stage. I love the throwback stage locations you’d see in so many classic beat ’em ups and run and gun games. Many of them reduce its use to hiding from powerful attacks, so it makes some of the fights less exciting compared to the stages. I wish there were more creative uses for the grapple hook against bosses, as well. It was also wildly difficult to focus on making sure the zipline attached at both ends while I dealt with all the chaos on screen, which didn’t enhance the intended toughness Steel Assault was aiming for. A few times I connected to a platform and the grapple would break and I didn’t understand why, or I couldn’t connect to a platform I previously attached to. Sometimes the hook felt finicky though, which were the only moments something felt out of my control.

Most of the stages feel like that, but finishing one often felt like it depended on my execution, not struggling to figure out unpredictable enemy tactics. It felt great feeling my thumbs dance around my gamepad while adrenaline flowed through my body as I continuously tried, and failed, to pass that section.

Steel assault trailer how to#

One level auto-scrolled upward with green acid rising from the bottom and I had to figure out how to continually grapple-jump through a pair of parallel conveyer belts while shooting and dodging enemies. But it doesn’t take too long before you’re balancing those basics while attacking or dodging enemies and avoiding obstacles. At first, its use is pretty mundane since most opportunities to deploy it are boiled down to attaching it between two walls or moving between lower and higher floors. You can effortlessly fire it in eight directions to reach different heights, avoid traps, or you use it to place yourself in advantageous situations.

You obviously have a capable gun, you can slide, and there are various power-ups you should grab that alters your weapon’s abilities, but the most interesting is the grappling hook, which functions more like a zipline. There aren’t a lot of abilities and tools you use. As I learned from my mistakes and became more proficient using my tools, I took less damage and even some later stages felt easier. Of course, taking damage and dying becomes frustrating at times but you’re never caught so off guard that you’re wondering how you got hit. Your character responds instantly to your commands, making most deaths easier to stomach. You’ll see all the classic tricks used from the 90’s to keep you on your toes, but it’s your job to use whatever you have to avoid them and Steel Assault successfully places that responsibility in your hands. No matter what stage you’re on, enemies pour on screen, surprising you by hopping out of buildings or leaping at you just as you approach the right spot, and you have to deal with craftily placed obstacles to avoid. A few clunky mechanics and hard to distinguish graphics make Steel Assault tougher than it should be, but the high-wire difficulty, retro sounds, and short length more than make up for any downsides.Īrcade games typically increased in difficulty as you made it to later levels, but Zenovia Interactive chose to make jumping through levels and using tools in unique ways as the method to keep the challenge steady from beginning to end.

Steel assault trailer trial#

Steel Assault is that tough-as-nails, trial by error kind of platformer, and its style is inspired by old-school, wallet-draining 90’s arcade games like Metal Slug, but also features influences from Contra. If any of the Soulsborne games were a 2D side-scrolling run and gun, I’d probably enjoy them a lot more.