But then I didn't tell them that if it wasn't for Xenon 2,1 wouldn't have dumped my Spectrum for an Atari ST. Or how much I was looking forward to Steel Soldiers. But it has been a while since the Bitmaps released a game on PC. It's amazing what an insular world adolescence is. "I went for a slash and Brad came in to get some water to take some paracetamol with because he had a sore throat. And while I was standing there doing my business, he suddenly turned round and, in (robot) Brad's voice, shouted: 'Atten-shun!' 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. Similarly, after each failure, you get to know where certain units might be and have a better idea of what is going on over the next hill. It's a more realistic approach to gameplay. Back when the original Z … Same thing with the status bar. Z:Steel Soldiers. Steel Soldiers (a.k.a. The new voice actor, Pete, worked on Phantom Menace and previous Star Wars films as well, so in voice acting circles we've got the best. This is entirely down to the computer At, which has a human-like quality, and can lay claim to being equal to the stellar standard set by Half-Life. All rights reserved. You know, like 'come on, bloody do something'. We actually have the same voice actors that we had before, so we have continuity and these guys really are hilarious. Using such broad terms, however, paints the wrong picture of a game that if it were a first-person shooter, would be closer to Quake than Half-Life - a fast-paced strategy deathmatch if you will, that promises to pi equally well offline and on. If it wasn't for the fact that to do so wouldn't get you very far, you could probably sit there for hours watching and listening to the metal carnage that follows. Jamie Barber is the one who knows the real ins-and-outs of Steel Soldiers. We should have about 20 multiplayer maps, for between two and eight players. [1] 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). Just back from a gruelling press trip across the US, the team were looking forward to an uncharacteristidy quiet Christmas. Lead Designer on the game from its conception, he has made it his mission to play every real-time strategy game since time began. Though they may not look it at first, nearly all of the maps have been superbly designed, and even the not-so-superb ones are damn good. Cool Beans Productions produced several animations, presented as cut scenes between a few of the missions. On 24 August 2000, the Bitmap Brothers announced a deal with EON Digital Entertainment to publish a sequel to Z, then given a working title of Z2. Z:Steel Soldiers. It's put right in your face. Unlike the missions, where two sides are fighting across the map, in the multiplayer game or indeed the single-player Skirmish mode, up to eight players can fight together or team up. Get in line for the ultimate Real-time Strategy. Before the game you can set credit limits, tech levels and team settings, throw in power-ups and turn off the fog-of-war. Or something.". Maybe we should have done this on my machine". Fans of this classic strategy title are in for a real treat. zMand his men are deemed renegades, and more through necessity than desire, they must fight to clear their names. It was slightly more complicated than it is and after a few quick decisions we changed it, tried it and everybody loved it. Secondly, Steel Soldiers has no tutorial. Unlike the first game, Z: Steel Soldiers has a story that is tied together. "You take the flag, the flag gives you the territory, the size of the territory gives you an amount of credits and as along as you have one territory, you can get credits and can always build something - and that is it. Steel yourself for some multiplayer mayhem. You can't just sit there, if you do you're going to die. Anyway, I'll shut up now. Everything is immediately in view. Though to be fair these only require some practise to get used to. 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. Also, each terrain will have its own eco-system, with little creatures running around. 21, 2012. report . The re-release of Steel Soldiers, which first came out in 2001, follows July 2014's re-release of the original Z, which first came out in 1996. Enter Z: Steel Soldiers. But, being greedy types, we feel you can never have enough of a good thing, and we'd have liked to have seen more. "Originally, when we first started, we were quite productive," says Mike. Basically, we've made things simple. Plus this PC we're playing on was dropped on the floor a little while back and we just flung all the bits back together. More important is the way the story is told (see panel). In the next mission come jeeps, and although they become obsolete later in the game, for the next couple of levels they are indispensable for scouting ahead. And a good thing, too, for under the 3D-accelerated graphics Steel Soldiers retains the same simple ideals that have characterised every Bitmap game since Xenon was released in 1988. "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'. Each of the cinematics follows the other but they might lack a bit of the original charm we saw in the first game. 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. Look at Half-Life, the most involving single-player game ever made? It all comes down to gameplay, really, and the original Z had it in spades. IWo days? "With the single-player campaign we have 30 levels, broken into stages of five levels set across six environments. 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. Brad and Alan are actually the names of the two voice actors, and after we played them a few cut-scenes from the first game, they snapped back into character in seconds. 29, 2019. report . Everyone in the office had their own ideas that they liked and it got to the point where you just think, 'fucking hell, let's just stick a pin in the wall and see what comes out'. Had I sent a Scout Helicopter in I might have seen the danger, even though that wouldn't have survived either. But as far as letting people create their own units, we don't know. 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. hide . At last it has arrived, Z: Steel Soldiers, the sequel to Z. Apply the official Z: Steel Soldiers v1.41 Beta 2 [US/UK] Patch. Time is money, as they say. The frantic non-stop action of the first title has been carried over into the second. It will provide new challenges to seasoned wargamers, and for those bored into submission after countless C&C clones, I can guarantee this game will re-ignite your passion for strategy games. Buildings, tanks and trees too come apart in the most extravagant way, and you can't help but stifle a grin as a lone robot soldier skids to his death under a hail of bullets. "There are loads of neat things," adds Mike. What we've done that we haven't before is develop a concept to a point where we can find a publisher, then finish the game. Offering a hefty 30 levels, five for each of the six planets in the game, at first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking that each planet is identical, the only difference being the colour. We didn't, though, not because of balancing issues, but because with all the best strategy games: chess, backgammon, draughts, the sides are equal and However, having figured out that a few dozen Tanks and Attack Choppers were enough to spit-roast me, maybe the AI didn't need advanced units as much as I obviously did. We've spent so much time balancing them that we may just stick to what we release. 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. "We did have unit facing in there as well," Mike explains, Robots. I also found that there are perhaps too many buttons on screen, and some I never had cause to use at all. "It does," insists Jamie. 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. Outside, the rain is relentless and, as I decide whether I should go back to work or piss off home, I remember that quite wisely I never let on that I didn't really get on with the original Z at first. I don't actually mind if you put the key stuff in there, that's fine.' I was thinking the same thing. Since the original game Z became so popular, the Bitmap Brothers decided to work on a sequel. Up until recently, names have been die least of the Bitmaps worries. 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 campaign should keep you going for a while, but when that's over, you can always play against others. There are also more multiplayer modes than Unreal Tournament, with variations on the deathmatch theme, Hero games where you must keep one character alive, a Theft mode where each must find and hold a special item and the king-of-the-hiil style Key Territory game. Now there are many features in Steel Soldiers that set it apart, but one that makes itself known quite early on is that rather than being one of those 3D strategy games that make more demands on your fingers rather than your brain, 2: Steel Soldiers works on your body the other way around. In fact, each unit moves pretty much as you would expect. it, I feared disappointment. "Every time you play it's that little bit different," gushes Mike. But the humour still comes through with the exploits of the main characters - Brad, Alan and General Zod. Therefore, you can play the whole game without touching a key, everything is controlled by the mouse. Steel Soldiers isn't one of those games in which you can just sit back, watch the credits roll in and hope to win through sheer weight of numbers. Z: Steel Soldiers) screenshots: Gamers looking for a nearly insane challenge should enjoy the fast action of the technology-driven Steel Soldiers. We've actually started that process. Before then, however, there was still much to do. So, thought I, a couple of tanks and a half-dozen Psychos should take care of them. To build a factory for vehicles, robots or aircraft, you have to make sure that the land is flat, and because you unfortunately can't build steamrollers, more often than not you'll end up with a robot factory on one side of your empire and vehicles being produced at another. It's just very simple. You have to forge ahead, and even if you control more than half the map, there's a good chance that the enemy will find a weakness somewhere, outflank you and snatch a territory -thereby receiving a substantial cash injection. 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. "In fact, we haven't done any optimisation for a year. It's amazing it works at all. Even though the camera angles are restricted, you can still go to the options screen and change things so you can zoom further, swing faster, whatever. You can start to build up your forces when this firefight is over. It's as simple as that. ; Replace the original Z2.EXE file with the one from the File Archive. Obviously the units available are exactly the same as those in the single-player campaign, but what is completely different is how many players can join in. I think it's really cool. Maybe it was just me, bur at the age of 13, I unswervingly thought Britain was the centre of the games industry. But for those itching to know what happened to General Zod and his bumbling sidekicks Brad and Alan after the original Z, here goes... Well, the General is no longer. Let's face it, you may have the most amazing single-player game sitting on your hard drive, but without multiplayer options, how long do you think it will last there? No longer a general anyway. 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. The simple fact is Z: Steel Soldiers is a truly excellent game, far superior to it's predecessor and easily up to the high standard The Bitmap Brothers have set themselves in the past. All your favourite strategies and gameplay from the classic version, with graphics that have powered into the 21st century, vivid 3D landscapes, and a state of the art engine that brings your game to life. Tanks don't float or sink into the landscape as they often do with so many other games. We've got 30 different units and 20 buildings, which is a fair selection. An uneasy truce exists between the two sides and thanks to Brad and Alan, that peace is shattered when they decide to shoot down a supposed troop ship landing in the demilitarised zone. How I didn't piss down my trouser leg, I'll never know. Although the campaign itself is entirely linear, the missions themselves, though driven by set objectives, are far from it. © mxdwn.com 2001 - 2020. file type Game demo. 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