It looks and sounds incredible, with a panache that could probably not actually be squeezed out of 16-bit hardware, but completely retains the feel of that era. There are bosses, mini bosses, into-the-screen perspective bosses, and standard enemies that feel like they could be bosses in other games. One minute you will be traversing the beautifully hand-drawn post-apocalyptic city on foot, the next you are riding a tooled-up speedboat, or hanging off the fuselage of a crazed flying contraption. And it does get hectic, right from the off, as you are swarmed by enemies and forced into a death defying climb upwards with an instant death chasm beneath. That it does so whilst being entirely fair and beatable with practice, regardless of difficulty level, is an admirable feat.
Much like the legendarily brilliant genre pieces constructed by Treasure, or the almost cinematic way Contra III bombards the senses, Steel Assault plays out like a series of increasingly more staggering set pieces and situations and doesn’t let up from the throttle. It’s modern but keeps the feel of the era If I had popped a cartridge containing this into my first SNES I probably would have spent the next week locked in my bedroom in front of my CRT. It feels like you are playing something special.
Movement is equally fluid – you can jump, double jump and slide. It works as smooth as silk and becomes second nature within seconds. Added to this rather handy tool is a Bionic Commando-esque grapple which can be aimed at platforms, vehicles and allows you to zipline your way around or dangle precariously in battle. Your hero is equipped with a whip-like melee weapon that can be employed multi-directionally, and comes off like a cross between Simon Belmont’s whip and Strider’s Cypher, and can be upgraded with power ups that add projectiles and all kinds of mayhem to it’s mechanical flail. If you are of a certain vintage age-wise, it takes just a few minutes play to see that Assault draws upon just about any decent title from your youth. This is a resolutely old-school experience that has beautifully designed linear levels, just like days of yore blasting through a Rockman X or Contra game. Raised as I was on the games that clearly inspired it, this long-in-gestation Kickstarter labour of love grabbed me the instant I fired it up, and didn’t let me out of its grip for the next several hours of hardcore run and gun action.ĭeveloper Zenovia have proudly boasted that this is not a Metroidvania, or a roguelike, or anything remotely bowing to modern trends. Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.I won’t beat around the bush – as far as future-retro modern titles go, Steel Assault is an absolute banger. Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior. Overusing our search engine with a very large number of searches in a very short amount of time.Using a badly configured (or badly written) browser add-on for blocking content.Running a "scraper" or "downloader" program that either does not identify itself or uses fake headers to elude detection.Using a script or add-on that scans GameFAQs for box and screen images (such as an emulator front-end), while overloading our search engine.There is no official GameFAQs app, and we do not support nor have any contact with the makers of these unofficial apps. Continued use of these apps may cause your IP to be blocked indefinitely. This triggers our anti-spambot measures, which are designed to stop automated systems from flooding the site with traffic. Some unofficial phone apps appear to be using GameFAQs as a back-end, but they do not behave like a real web browser does.Using GameFAQs regularly with these browsers can cause temporary and even permanent IP blocks due to these additional requests. If you are using Maxthon or Brave as a browser, or have installed the Ghostery add-on, you should know that these programs send extra traffic to our servers for every page on the site that you browse.The most common causes of this issue are: Your IP address has been temporarily blocked due to a large number of HTTP requests.