As I wrote in our review, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor's motion controls are a simmering cocktail of challenging, wonky and outright broken. It's possible to iron out most of the kinks, but it takes time. Here are some tips to get you started.
Keep your cool
If Heavy Armor's motion controls have flaws, its gruelling missions seem designed to emphasise them. Take a single, incautious step in any direction and you're likely to be blind-sided by enemy VTs or blown up by minefields, flooding the cockpit with smoke and broken glass. It's only natural to speed up your gestures in response, but this will generally scupper the recognition. Best to stay calm then. When pulling out the right or left dashboard panel, remember to drop your arm before reaching for a button, or you'll just waggle the panel like you're trying to detach it.
Don't sit in a low chair
If you're having trouble reaching down to the VT's power lever by your right thigh, that could be because your chair isn't high enough. After faffing around with various combinations of cushions, I enjoyed best results with a high-backed, armless dining room chair which kept my elbows above my knees.
Keep your posture
Think of Steel Battalion as one of those old-school English headmasters, balancing books atop your head to teach you the virtues of an erect backbone. Granted, dropping a load of books on the floor isn't as annoying as, say, being unable to look through your VT port because you're slumped on a beanbag, cue explosive death at the hands of an unseen infantrymen. But ends justify the means. By the time you leave Heavy Armor's company, you'll be straighter than the Spanish Inquisition.
Keep an eye on the body map
It's not just there to entertain you with its agonised spasms. In particular, watch out for the game confusing your upper arm with your forearm, resulting in the spectacle of a wireframe doll throttling itself.
Don't get your left and right hands mixed up
Looking around the cockpit is performed by swiping your right hand from right to left, or your left hand from left to right. It isn't performed by swiping your left hand from right to left, or your right hand from left to right. A distinction you should bear in mind when somebody shoves an arm through the hull and tries to knife your comms officer. When changing the main gun's ammunition, use your right hand to press the HEAT shell button, your left hand to press the Armor-Piercing shell button.
Know when to pop the hatch
Popping the hatch when the bullets are flying is bloody stupid. Popping the hatch during the quiet times is enormously sensible. You're about as likely to get a precise sense of the outside world from the VT's "map screen" as you are from fever dreams. So take in the view, and don't forget you can recon through your binoculars just by raising your left hand.
5 comments so far...
Thos. on 21 Jun '12 said:
I guess it helps enhance the experience of being in a frustrating war situation. I always really enjoyed playing Left 4 Dead with a newbie or two running the wrong way, because in the real zombie apocalypse, that's exactly how it is going to be - you're not going to find yourself with three fully armed snipers, you will be stuck with idiots.
Do you mind if I ask you what level of Steel Battalion you played up to? Because every reviewer I have read has said they were literally unable to play the game, and the bloke from Destructroid is getting massive respect for making it to Level 5.
OXM ETboy on 22 Jun '12 said:
I'm somewhere towards the end of the fifth campaign - there are seven, though I hear the seventh is on the short side. If the Destructoid bloke stopped at the fifth level, he's in the second campaign. Which is a bit rubbish, frankly.
It's one of those Marmite things, I guess, though I'm surprised by the severity of reaction. The controls are tricksy, but exert a bit of self-control and they're perfectly manageable. As I wrote in the review, it's easy to conflate the recognition problems with the nature of the experience they're aiming for. Heavy Armor is meant to be tough - it's meant to be a game where you feel powerless. You're trapped in a barely mobile steel can with a bunch of frightened kids and a load of fragile equipment. It's the polar opposite of a game like, say, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, where everything's carefully pegged out by the HUD so you're never in danger of feeling frustrated.
I've adjusted to the point where the level design is the stickier problem. Trust me - you don't know dick-moves in level design till you've played Heavy Armor. I beat a level the other night which had me "sniping" at tunnels from a bridge. I was doing pretty well, but then the game spawned an enemy VT literally right inside a warehouse just below my position, and it shot my goddamn periscope off. I managed to chase off the rest of them through a cracked windshield - and then an all-but-unkillable heavy VT appeared right behind me.
The best advice I can give is to download the demo and experiment. It's clearly not for everyone, but it doesn't deserve the kicking it's getting.
Thos. on 22 Jun '12 said:
I read a lot of reviewers saying it worked well at PAX, so I'm guessing their home setups are less than optimal.
OXM ETboy on 22 Jun '12 said:
I really couldn't guess, the reaction is so polar. My home Kinect setup certainly isn't "optimal" - the sensor's way too close to my chair - but I got it going in the end.
PS. If anybody's after a second opinion, I firmly endorse the Edge verdict. Give or take a point, of course
http://www.edge-online.com/reviews/stee ... mor-review
GHOSTY05 on 22 Jun '12 said:
Having played the demo, I have to say its a cool idea and i quite like it.
It' just a little fiddly and i keep forgetting what the hell i am supposed to do.
I have my sensor sitting on top of my 52"), TV that is!
I have found that generally the higher the better, as there' more depth of field