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Gangrene
Federated Suns
Leftenant General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 939
Location: United States
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 Posted: 26-Jun-2004 19:12 Post subject: Game Review: Titans of Steel |
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Titans of Steel is a video game that is a blatant ripoff of Battletech. It has "Titans" that have autocannons, lasers, LRM's, SRM's, machineguns, etc., and which engage in battle on a hex-based map. I have spent over 6 hours trying to play this game and have given it a fair shake, IMO. So now I make my review with a clean conscience.
Game: Titans of Steel: Warring Suns
Genre: Strategy
Cost: $29.99 online, but I picked up my copy for $10 at Frys
The abridged review: This game sucks.
Full Review:
Titans of Steel: Warring Suns is an exercise in frustration. The game starts by giving the player 3 options: HQ, Factory, and Battle. In order to start playing you must go to the HQ menu, and create a new unit and train some jocks. This is where the tedium starts. The game touts itself as full role-playing game, but this is only true in a Diablo-esque sense. The characters are a collection of numbers that change slightly after ever battle, that is the limit of the role-playing element. So at the very start you throw out some numbers and make a group, which wouldn't be so bad if it was possible to make pilots that were decent. Unfortunately, this game behaves in true gamer-geek fashion and you are forced to make pilots that are the bottom of the barrel and completely incapable. After this, you have the pleasure of purchasing some of the weakest Titans in the game. Yeah.
I should mention that there is a documented "cheat" in the manual where you can start out with as much money and skill points as you want. However, these pilots cannot gain any experience, nor can they be used in any of the campaignes. So you're back to regular pilots to play the full game.
Once you have made your group you can then take it into battle. There are some good things about the battle mode that I will take time to mention. The first is that the game is not turn-based, it is event-based. When you select an action, it has associated with it a certain amount of game time. Thus while some Titans may be busy doing time consuming tasks, like running up hill, others can perform shorter tasks like firing small weapons multiple times. This adds a good tactical element to the game that Btech is missing. Another nice touch is that to-hit deterioration from range is linearly scaled over the entire range, so it is not like Battletech where one hex can make the difference between a decent to-hit and a difficult to-hit.
However, the rest of the Battle mode is not well done. For some reason the jocks cannot hit anything. Even at a range of 1 most of the pilot's to-hits are less than 20%, and often less than 10%. You cannot do much in terms of tactics when the pilots are completely incompetent. Furthermore the Titans fall over for just about anything. I learned quickly not to jump, walk into water, walk into swamp, and to basically avoid anything but open ground and trees. The result is that battles generally degenerate into 1 hex standoffs where you see who gets lucky first. Some fun. I could overlook this if the characters advanced quickly, but they do not. The experience gained from battles is meager, and hardly makes a difference.
There are other elements that make the game annoying. If a battle is going badly you cannot start over without the game penalizing you. If you quit out of a battle before you finish you must pay a fine in game dollars to retrieve your unit (to get around this I backed up my squadX.dat files in the save directory - now if only I could edit them manually). During character generation, if you make a mistake in assigning attributes it cannot be undone - you must dismiss the jock and start over. Small things like this can really turn me off the game.
In conclusion, this game is not fun at all so avoid it. Unless someone comes out with a convenient hack on the internet that fixes the games problems I will shelve it.
If you are interested in the game I urge you to also read the review below. It is dead on, IMO.
http://www.strategy-gaming.com/reviews/titans_of_steel/index.shtml
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Gangrene
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Havoc~Ronin
Federated Suns
Major
Joined: 13-Nov-2003 00:00
Posts: 427
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| Posted: 28-Jun-2004 12:28 Post subject: RE: Game Review: Titans of Steel |
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Thanks for the warning. I was considering the game, but now I shall wait.
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"Ours is not to question why, ours is just to do...."
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jfox61
Clan Ghost Bear
Point Commander
Joined: 05-Aug-2004 00:00
Posts: 46
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: 21-Aug-2004 21:15 Post subject: RE: Game Review: Titans of Steel |
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I have to admit I enjoyed this game. It has a lot of elements of BT to it. The problem is getting your mech pilot up to scratch. It is almost impossible without cheating. I had to play a couple of player v player games against some big mechs and not reply to my own shooting. Naughty I know but the only way to get your mech pilots good enough to keep the buggers on their feet. Just as gangrene says it is almost impossible to do anything but travel in a straight line. It also cheats in campaign mode. The missions are not fixed. If you enter a mission with one mech you get about 3 against you. If you retry the same mission by loading the same saved game but use 3 mechs you end up fight about 9-10 mechs. This is frustrating as it seems the AI is stacked against you whatever you do. The mech designs are good and there is a huge amount of variation and some nice weaponry too. The mech design element of the game is well thought out and a couple of BT design utilities could learn a few things from it.
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"Thats the fastest race ever ran. But not as fast as the world record".
(David Coleman :- English sports presenter)
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Shadowking
Kell Hounds
Captain
Joined: 22-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 365
Location: United States
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| Posted: 27-Sep-2004 16:57 Post subject: RE: Game Review: Titans of Steel |
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| You actually payed money for it? You can probably find the previous version of the game online for free. I think the warring suns is suppose to be a sequel or something. It seems more like a Solaris type game than anything. You have your own 'stable' that you hire pilots and buy/build mechs for, then have'em fight. And ya, trying to build up your pilot can be a pain. Especially if they keep getting killed on you, since you can only replace them rather than revive them.
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