The button you have to click to remind yourself of mission objectives, scores, find units and so on is a little on the small side. It all comes down to gameplay, really, and the original Z had it in spades. All of these were cut to pieces before they reached the first marker. Jamie Barber is the one who knows the real ins-and-outs of Steel Soldiers. To say the game is a bit pacey would be something of an understatement, but having played through all of the 'big' strategy games of last year, of which Ground Control is perhaps the closest in nature, what stuck me was the movement on screen and the clean way in which everything is displayed. Steel Soldiers (a.k.a. "For the interface, though our brief to the designers and programmers has been 'I don't want to press a key, file type Game demo. Onto the jungle planet with its mass of trees, and it's time to bring in the choppers to clip the treetops. For all the cutting back of the fat, Steel Soldiers isn't without a few love handles. After all, The Bitmaps have been pretty much out of circulation for some time, and to come back with a game to match or even excel past classics such as Xenon II, Speedball or Gods was always going to tricky. Our most advanced AI yet, that will stop at nothing to rid the universe of Zod and his band of space renegades…. And with that, the tape runs out almost on cue. We streamlined the whole game, cut everything back and the game has become so simple, so intuitive -which is exactly what we were aiming to achieve, but we overcomplicated things in development by putting in things that we didn't need. Z:Steel Soldiers. Or something.". "There are loads of neat things," adds Mike. "We spent a whole year putting scripts into the game, then we finished the AI system and thought, 'shit, we can take all these scripts out - well, 95 per cent of them'. After being lead through a few nearly-completed missions by Jamie, it was then time for me to dive in. And why is it still there taking up valuable hard drive space? The original Z distinguished itself from its competitors in the RTS market with a unique take on unit construction and resource management. Watch a trailer for the Z: Steel Soldiers remake below: This content is imported from YouTube. So each set of five maps will have a distinctive style." In the bloody aftermath of 'Z' comes Z:Steel Soldiers. Secondly, Steel Soldiers has no tutorial. If a territory is yours, its boundary will be red, while those held by your opponent are bordered blue. As to consoles, what we're doing is creating games that we want to play, rather than fit a game to a specific format. 'The guys in the office still play it, both in single and multiplayer," smiles head Bitmap Mike Montgomery, as he sips his tea. More important is the way the story is told (see panel). The resource comes from taking territory. "We haven't optimised the code yet," says Mike, as the PC flicks back to life. It isn't even a consideration that a Psycho (bog-standard infantry robot) costs more to build than a Dreadnaught (lumbering battle cruiser), it's more a case of how long each takes to come into service. In fact, their last was the original Z, a one-time PC Classic that remarkably, still remains very playable if you like a serious challenge and if you can get the damn thing to work on today's ultra-fast machines. The frantic non-stop action of the first title has been carried over into the second. Unlike the original, Z: Steel Soldiers is plot driven with the player progressing through a campaign that takes place over 6 vastly different worlds, 30 levels in total. Z: Steel Soldiers (originally released simply as Steel Soldiers in North America) is a real-time strategy game released by the Bitmap Brothers on 15 June, 2001 for the Windows platform. I don't actually mind if you put the key stuff in there, that's fine.' But the humour still comes through with the exploits of the main characters - Brad, Alan and General Zod. They were losing their voice at one point. But they thought it was the hardest work they'd done for months. Summary: Takes the core structure of the original title, Z, and immerses you into an arcade-strategy title where the emphasis is on real-time combat. But as far as letting people create their own units, we don't know. Significantly, as with Westwood's recently announced Dune sequel, "where line of sight was dependant also on which way the units were looking, but it was unplayable and boring. Some people like those things, but I don't. FREE. It's more plot-driven and focused," Mike stresses. Perhaps if some of the missions saw you taking on the role of defender rather than attacker there would be even greater variety and more satisfying balance. You can see the boundaries between each territory, where the flag capture points are and take a guess at where your enemy might first appear by just looking over the terrain rather than having to attempt the level again and again. Z:Steel Soldiers. Z: Steel Soldiers - v.3.0 - Game demo - Download Demo version of Z: Steel Soldiers, a(n) strategy game, v.3.0, for PCs and laptops with Windows systems.Free and legal download. Basically, we've made things simple. "The territory model is very simple, in fact, it's as simple as you could possibly get. This was after the developers had secured all rights to Z2 from the publisher GT Interactive. © mxdwn.com 2001 - 2020. Hey there, I recently found an old CD of the Game, installed it and got it working somehow, after I patched it to the newest vesion I asked myself how I would go to host a Multiplayer game I actually have much experience in multiplayer hosting such as Dedicated Servers, Portmapping and etc. Technicians (who can take over buildings), Spies, Shockwave Tanks. If you know what units you have, you know what you're up against. Back, too, is Zod, the cybernetic general based on Robert Duvall's napalm-loving character from Apocalypse Now (you may have noticed him on the cover). You can't just sit there, if you do you're going to die. Again this is thanks to the simplicity of the game itself, but because the computer's aims are the same as yours (capture land), the developers have made things rather easy for themselves - not that I'm saying programming intelligence of this calibre is in any way simple. We'll do the game first, then think about what machine it would suit best." Imagine playing football on an unmarked pitch, having to look at a map to judge where the penalty box is and you'll understand why. "There's more of a story, which we didn't have before. Of course, with each restart, while my knowledge of the level only grows, the opposing general has to endure something approaching a lobotomy, and while he's pretty predictable at the start of each mission, he certainly learns fast. Geographically small and fairly hilly, it teaches you that in order to win, you must move quickly. Case closed. It wasn't until level six - the first jungle mission - that I noticed just how clever my computer opponent really was. We should have about 20 multiplayer maps, for between two and eight players. In Steel Soldiers, you just have to take the map. "Z was classed as a Command & Conquer clone," says Mike, almost as if the comparisons still wound him. You don't realise how difficult it is to create maps for three-, five-or seven-player games... "We're still thinking about third-party support. At last it has arrived, Z: Steel Soldiers, the sequel to Z. Not the game's fault of course, but as a strategy title it will certainly be too action-orientated for some. For instance, as is traditional in real-time strategy games, units are drip-fed to you level by level. Later on, as ships start to become available, the water between the land masses opens up. So, thought I, a couple of tanks and a half-dozen Psychos should take care of them. But on this particular product we have made some brave moves, and 10 months ago we actually changed direction in a big way. [1] Even looking through the screenshots I took while playing the game, few seemed to capture the pure exhilaration I experienced while playing. Although the campaign itself is entirely linear, the missions themselves, though driven by set objectives, are far from it. Battle For Dune, Steel Soldiers will be the Bitmaps first full 3D game and as Westwood has repeatedly professed, it's not a step to be taken lightly for a company who've yet to dissappoint its fans. Which is why Steel Soldiers will come with a wealth of multiplayer options: "There's a timed game," says Jamie. Taking an outside view, and this from someone who spent many hours indoors playing Speedball when, at 18, Ishould have been swallowing them, the Bitmaps four-year hiatus from gaming's fickle limelight has been far too long. In tact, I got a little bit carried away and took two territories, and although this gave a short-term boost to my wallet, it left my forces too spread out and within a couple of minutes, both regions were lost. This in turn allows quicker manipulation of your troops when time is of the essence. That unpredictability adds to the game so much.". 3D games may look the dog's bollocks and run faster than an attached pair trom a kebab shop owner, but they are notoriously fiddly beasts to get to grips with, and this hasn't helped their popularity. Maybe we should have done this on my machine". Looked at as a series of still images, Steel Soldiers? "You just have to go out there," Mike points out. The mission objectives in themselves are nothing we haven't seen or done before in countless games, but to be fair the same is true in almost all genres. Also, each terrain will have its own eco-system, with little creatures running around. To uncover the story, missions must, of course, be completed and there is a healthy range of mission objectives, from rescuing lost units (usually Brad, Allen, or both), escorting Zod, finding lost items, destroying enemy factories or all out annihilation of the enemy. 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