STEEL STRIDER

Fun Bite-sized platformer-shooter: Jammin Soundtrack, good Level design, excellent boss design and solid combat rounds out the package. Its short but sweet!

I have mixed feelings about this game because parts of it are brilliant, but other parts of it are equally frustrating to me. The good - beautiful, creative artwork and animation. Everything runs super smooth and feels highly polished. The gameplay is simple to pick up but tough to master. Which brings me to the bad - the difficulty level of this game is brutal. After dozens of attempts, I've decided to give up on beating this game even on normal. Perhaps this intense challenge will be a positive to some people, but for me, it's too much and makes the game too stressful to be fun. Despite giving up on Steel Strider, I still plan to play its sequel Mechblaze because I've read it has a more forgiving difficulty level. The excellent quality of the visuals and gameplay left me wanting more, only the difficulty was getting in the way of that. I'm giving it a thumbs up because, despite not enjoying the game in the end, I think it's very well crafted and I love this niche style of "cybergrunge" / dark scifi design. I'm probably not the target audience for Steel Strider - despite loving the themes, I've never been great at frantic arcade action games, and I don't have enough spare time to spend it being stuck on something for hours. This is a "want to love" game for me. I have a lot of challenges in real life and it would be a waste of my energy to spend it practising hard games when I could be working on real-world goals. But for someone who has more free time + headspace (or simply gets more pleasure from hard games) I think this could be your next favourite!

Почти все здесь прекрасно: - МНОГО оружия, с пистолетиком бегать не придется. - Разнообразный геймплей: шутер-платформер, скролл-шутер, стелс, раннер. - Отличный музон. - Нетупые боссы. Зерг не пройдет. - Запаса сложности хватит всем. При первом прохождении выбрал hard mode (есть еще insane) - игра задала мне жару похлеще какого-нибудь митбоя. А вот что непрекрасно: - Соотоношение сторон 4:3 (игра 2015 года, ага). - Автопереключение оружия, когда подбираешь новое или заканчиваются патроны. - С геймпада играть даже не пытайтесь.

I would call Steel Strider a relaxed paced, twin-stick run 'n gun. While the game has a number of faults, I still kinda like it. Let's start with controls. For me, I found I had best results with an Xbox controller using the left stick for movement, jumping/jump jet and crouching. While the right stick was used for aiming. I haven't played with the options, but it'd be nice if I could just point my weapon at the angle I want to shoot and let off the stick. Instead, I have continually push in the direction I want to aim. Which feels a little awkward. The shooting and melee tied to the tiggers works well and the shoulders for weapon selection works too. I found myself off the other buttons since the right stick needed constant attention. While I can this game a run 'n gun, I found slowing up a bit to aim worked better than rushing forth. Most enemies really telegraph their ranged attack, and your character, while kinda slow, has enough mobility options to generally stay pretty safe. The game does want some platforming, but the player character has jump jets to really control their landing. So long as they have fuel left on their meter, which recharges automatically when no in use. The game features a number of boss fights which are pretty fun. Steel Strider has a number of weapons that the player slowly collects then collects upgraded versions. Your handgun has a slow fire rate but unlimited ammo. The Assault Rifle has a faster firing rate but uses ammo. Though, like the Shotgun, I rarely ran low on ammo. The previously mentioned Shotgun spreads shot for better cover further away. The Grenade Launcher fires a power attack but at an arc. The rocket launcher fires a little slower and has pretty limited ammo but packs a punch. The Missile Launcher fires a volley of homing attacks. The Lightning Gun fires a powerful continuous beam. And the Rail Gun shot passes through most enemies to damage anything in its path. The player character also has a powerful energy sword melee attack which is good for dispatching nearby enemies. The graphics, sound and music aren't great and look a little cheap to me. But they are functional and aren't off putting. I certainly can't say that Steel Strider is a great game. Not even a good game. Yet, I kinda like it. It doesn't look like anything special and the controls are a little janky (but that's easy to overcome). However, I do still find myself enjoying playing through the levels. So, I suppose I do recommend it, but only if the price is really cheap.

屏幕搞得这么小boss搞得这么大，最终boss还喜欢搞屏幕外攻击，躲都不好躲

if you liked cybernoid on snes...

While clearly a follow-up to [b]Gigantic Army[/b], compared to previous Astro Port games this one has a much more "modern" feeling, given its mouse+keyboard (or twin-stick) controls and unlimited continues, and thankfully just pressing Esc doesn't quit the game. The new mech is more lean and agile, and loses the toughness and shield in favor of a bigger arsenal and an energy sword for close quarters attacks; models similar to the old mech appear as bosses a couple of times except they look much bigger, leading to questions about how huge the bosses in [b]GA[/b] were in proportion... To my surprise, even [b]Satazius[/b] is revealed to be part of the Astro Port universe as its events are framed as happening within the wider plot of this game; at some point the ship from there must be freed. Amusingly, an enemy faction is called Dark Hell Company (the developer's old name). Once again, sadly, the delivery of the story is a weak point, just dry text screens, this time from an AI assisting the pilot; there are very current themes like propaganda and misinformation in war but they don't get the chance to be more than just an excuse to link the four scenarios together. When it comes down to the actual game, however, it's quite fun as it offers plenty of robots to send to the scrapyard, sometimes you have to contend with small swarms of them but once again the real stars are the big ones, be them bosses or heavy regular enemies that require at least a few grenades to fall. Conserving ammo is important as here only the basic pistol has unlimited ammo, Lightning Gun and Rail Gun are fun to use, but better save them for bosses. The screenshots are worth more than words to show how great the game looks, with plenty of variety in mecha design, some spectacular bosses, and very satisfying explosions. Music, on the other hand, is pretty forgettable. The checkpoints are just enough to keep a steady challenge, and the game autosaves, very welcome as it's quite a bit longer than previous AP titles, with a full run requiring a good hour of gameplay. There is a stage where you must practice some stealth, although you can just say "screw it" and destroy the cannons that pop out when the alarm is activated. In another stage, one of my favourites, you run on a train as a giant wheel is in pursuit. Another has a reactor to shut down. The only stage I found really disappointing is a fortunately brief one where the player takes flight, I hoped for a callback to [b]Armed Seven[/b] but instead the mecha is quite awkward to control in that circumstance. For its modest price, it's another to add to the pile of worthy Astro Port games, even if fans of the mecha genre may find it straying too much from the model of [b]Gigantic Army[/b], which is closer to classic [b]Assault Suits[/b] games than this one.

SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun, i cannot even put it into words. great looking graphics too, i love the art style.