Have you ever heard of Trials? This is such an ancient Java toy that could be run both on a computer and on a mobile phone. She was very popular at the time… Well, or so it seemed to me because literally everyone in our class had it. A couple of years ago, I was surprised to learn that Trials still exist, and even the gameplay has not changed much since the two thousandth year: the player is invited to take a bike and ride along a crazy track, responsible only for tilting the bike forward or backward, gas and brake. The track is linear, there is no need to turn anywhere, and the game keeps the balance for you. To be honest, after watching a couple of gameplay videos, I didn’t feel any attraction to Trials, and I forgot about it the same day.
But it’s a bit not about Trials. The fact is that when the next game in this series called Evolution became exclusive to XBox, the savvy guys had the opportunity to occupy a suddenly vacant part of the market in the form of PlayStation. These guys were Poles from a relatively small studio called Tate Multimedia, who released their more or less clone of Trials Evolution called Urban Trial Freestyle. Along the way, the Polish studio did not miss the chance to try itself as a publisher, becoming a full-fledged indie developer. Thus, Tate Multimedia gained the opportunity to negotiate with no one and do whatever it pleases. And as soon as Tate raised enough money, she immediately released her own, completely independent project called Steel Rats – and this is the game that will be discussed.
Oh wonderful world of noir
It’s worth starting with the fact that Tate Multimedia’s Steel Rats were still made without unnecessary risk, and therefore the gameplay mechanics are based on the same Trials, in which the Polish studio has gained some experience in creating clones. I have not played the last games of the Trials series, but if we compare Steel Rats with the videos I once saw, the following differences can be noted in the gameplay: Steel Rats have two lanes between which the player can switch, plus there is the opportunity to snuggle up to the very edge of the road; in addition, Steel Rats offer to ride vertically and upside down on some surfaces, and it is also possible to turn around and drive back along the highway. And, of course, Steel Rats have enemies that can be destroyed in every possible way – I’ll write about them in more detail later. In the meantime, it’s worth making a small conclusion: in terms of gameplay, Steel Rats is still the same platformer on wheels that Trials is.
Our heroes are Lisa Carvalho, James Jones, Randall Kaiser and Toshiro Takahiro. Let me also mention their bikes: the functionality of such a motorcycle is very controversial, but recognizable shapes with an insane number of pipes sticking out of extremely unusual engines, and the periodic addition of very crazy parts do their job - the cars look incredibly cool.
So why wasn’t I tempted by the Trials gameplay video, but attracted by the gameplay of Steel Rats? The answer is extremely simple: at Steel Rats, we are given to ride not some kind of dirt bike, but a large and pretentious American motorcycle. Yes, it turned out to be enough to interest me, and I was not disappointed. Moreover, upon personal acquaintance with the game, I was really delighted. What we are going to talk about now is the main trump card of the Steel Rats – it is the aesthetics of the world in which the action takes place. The Coastal City of the 1940s, where our heroes live, is a technological marvel by Alexander Warren, a genius who was decades ahead of his time. Thus, inventions like lasers, monorails, and fast delivery of parcels and letters via compressed air pipelines are juxtaposed with the usual vintage cars, airships, and lamp technology. All this retro-futuristic technonoire with Art Deco sauce looks just wonderful, and it’s immediately obvious that the developers have put their soul into it.
Some of the stylized photos that accompany excerpts about events, places, and personalities from the world of Steel Rats can sell the game better than any screenshots or videos.
And we also have a small amount of horror here. It’s a classic horror movie, from the beginning of the first half of the last century. The most basic of our robo-enemies, for example, are subtly reminiscent in design of the alien walkers from the original, old illustrations of Wells’ War of the Worlds. The rest of the hostile mechanisms do not refer so unambiguously to any classical works, but, nevertheless, they are executed in the same spirit. The audience Award goes to the Screamer, which is definitely the best retro-futuristic robot design in recent years.
At least once, someone called Steel Rats a “biker boy”-and I think that’s a compliment. Few games try to create unusual settings based on the first half of the last century, and each of them definitely deserves attention at least for an attempt. But Steel Rats is definitely a successful attempt. If we compare it specifically with the first Bioshock, then we were thrilled after the disaster, and the city was dead. The coastal City, however, is alive: in the background, people are running away, airships are exploding, tanks are fighting robots – and all this against the background of the aforementioned noir futurism. Unfortunately, this is where the unequivocal advantages of the game end, and I can’t praise the setting anymore, so it’s time to talk about the cons and controversial points.
There are a lot of entourage advertisements posted all over the city, and most of all I liked the poster of the movie The Return of the Toaster Man, as well as the banner depicting a hot rod-like car with an extremely unusual engine.
Disadvantages of the game
Let’s start with the plot. The same Bioshock raised the problems of society, and the culmination of the narrative still throws players into awe and sometimes causes discussions on forums. Of course, not every game can achieve such success, but the problem is that the Steel Rats, it seems to me, did not even try. No problems are raised in principle: it’s just that scrap metal robots attacked the city, so it would be nice to disassemble them back for scrap, that’s the end. The surprise of the unexpected turn lies in the fact that it never happens, and the ending came out rather weak. And then there’s the fact that, just like in Bioshock, the story of the world is told using collectibles that need to be searched on the map – it’s been more than a decade since this stupid design element got into games, and I still can’t figure out why the hell I need to do this. Well, this is more or less justified in the Bioshock and does not affect the gameplay much. But in Steel Rats, such a pitch seriously disrupts the gameplay, sometimes forcing the player to try ten times to perform the same jump in order to reach the hidden secret icon. Why is unclear. These short stories about the world of the game could easily replace the loading screens: those who need to listen, those who are not interested skip.
You also have to repeat the same jump ten times due to the fact that the physics of the game sometimes fails. This is most noticeable when you play as a punk from Germany named Randy. His bike is equipped with a harpoon – and almost every time you cling to some major enemy, you can only wonder how it will end. Another good (and much more annoying) example is a boss fight. A jerk on a bike can carry you through its huge iron paws… or maybe not. I still haven’t figured out what it depends on. It’s just that sometimes you’re safe, and sometimes you fall off your bike and lose your life. And if the latter happens, then you can only pray that the checkpoint system will restore you to a normal place. After all, when fighting a boss, there is a chance to respawn right under his laser, which usually leads to replaying the mission from the very beginning. And there are also moments when the player is surrounded by an impassable wall, which disappears only after all the enemies in the formed arena are destroyed. The problem is that if one of the robots suddenly knocked the player off the bike, then we have every chance to be reborn outside the arena, without having a chance to return there.It’s good if the player is revived after the arena: in this case, you can just score on the hardware and go to the exit from the level. But at least once I was revived to the arena, and not being able to enter it, I had to press the restart button. In other words, the gameplay can be very, very annoying.
Controversial aspects of the game
But there is something pleasant in the gameplay. For example, the same physics behaves very well as long as the motorcycle remains within the limits of what motorcycles do in real life. The bike has inertia, it leans pleasantly from side to side, it’s fun to jump on it, and in general it behaves clearly and predictably. Unfortunately, they don’t really let us ride: the ubiquitous robots insist that they be disassembled for spare parts. Fortunately, the player is given a variety of ways to fulfill this request: each character has a basic attack, loaded and ultimate, plus everyone can use two standard bike attacks and pick up weapons scattered on the map. Does that sound good? Well, that’s just the way it sounds. In fact, there are simply too many ways to destroy the enemy, and they are not balanced. Therefore, first of all, attacks that cause glitches in physics, such as the aforementioned Randy harpoon, are being scrapped. Then we learn that ultimatum attacks work every other time, and when they work and when they don’t is unclear. Then it turns out that the charged attacks of half the characters do not cause much damage, and they charge for a long time and are not particularly convenient. And, consolidating our success, we understand that Toshi’s main attack in the form of his drone does quite well with absolutely everything that we encounter in the game, because no enemy has a seemingly obvious immunity to the abilities of a particular character, and therefore there is not much point in changing between them.
As a result, even sincerely trying to diversify the action on the screen as much as possible, I used charged attacks several times, after which I completely forgot about them, and I rarely resorted to ultimatums, mainly because reliable means are needed in a critical situation, and not those that may not work. And, to be honest, Toshi’s drone plus some kind of weapon in case the power suddenly runs out – that’s all you need. The developers probably realized for themselves how deadly Toshi turned out to be, and therefore they are forced to play without him in several missions. But despite all the flaws, I have to say one thing: kill robots, even with all the glitches… Very funny. And the level at which they give us an endless supply of tommy guns and offer to cut through them in straight lines, shooting cans left and right – this is one of the priceless moments of Steel Rats.
Sound and soundtrack
And so, it remains only to tell you how this game sounds. First of all, I want to mention motorcycles – the rumbling of their engines was a success, and just listening to two-wheeled friends gives a lot of pleasure. There are no complaints about all the other sounds, but I can’t single out anything special either. But the soundtrack is another very controversial point. If you once again recall the Bioshock, then in that game there were many compositions from the first half of the last century. There is not a single such song in Steel Rats – I can only assume that it was cheaper to write your own music than to buy a license to use vintage recordings, but as a result, the entire soundtrack, with the exception of The Hoovering from the Japanese female trio The 5.6.7.8‘s, consists of synthesizers. It feels like everything that’s happening on the screen is an eighties movie with a very unusual style. And even though I love retrowave and the eighties, it’s impossible to get rid of the thought that Steel Rats would have played better with more authentic trumpet sounds and Louis Armstrong’s wheezing. After all, the aforementioned The Hoovering is the only song that sounds out of the frame, namely in the game world of jukeboxes found here and there – it’s modern, but still more or less fits into the universe of Steel Rats rock’n’roll, and it looks much more profitable than synthesizers..
By and large, Tate Multimedia mixed several genres, but they didn’t bring any of them to mind. Do you want a platformer where you can do motorcycle stunts? Play the honed and polished Trials. Do you just want to drive along the road with a side view and listen to the conversations of the characters? There is at least The Final Station, set in a dying world in the image and likeness of the Strugatskys. And if you want horror, then you can choose from a whole galaxy of other games. But if you love the American culture of the last century, the noir atmosphere, old tales and the forties, take my 100% preservation and just ride through the Coastal City, lazily shooting robots and not trying to break through the clumsy physics to reach the finish line in a certain time or jump to the next secret. I bet you will be delighted, and the Steel Rats will give you two or three unforgettable evenings.:
As an afterword, I can’t help but mention one more jamb.: after buying the soundtrack of the game, I was surprised to find that the rock and roll song was not included in it for some reason, but on the album Tanuki Got The Hoovering it sounds completely different. As it turned out, the in-game version of this track was only released in a very limited edition on vinyl promo singles. So I had no choice but to unpack the game files. And it turned out that in addition to the already mentioned composition, the official soundtrack did not include a little more than three dozen ambient tracks, plus several unfinished and, apparently, unused songs – all of them were found in the Steel Rats folder.In addition, some tracks in the game files are present in a form disassembled into separate instrument tracks. All of the above can be downloaded in the original quality from here:
And yes, of course, if you suddenly passed this game and you liked it, I strongly advise you to purchase Steel Rats officially. In this form, Steel Rats are a very rough diamond, but efforts should be encouraged. In addition, if Tate Multimedia takes into account its mistakes, the sequel can turn out to be a real masterpiece.
An unobvious control detail: playing this game on the keyboard is as inconvenient as possible, and using a laptop is strictly contraindicated, since soldered arrow keys “up / down” will turn the process into a continuous torment. Well, you need a bigger monitor.
That’s a good point. To be honest, I don’t even remember what the Steel Rats were on anymore. Except that it’s not on a laptop – I’m kind of on them in general… It’s hard, I prefer a stationary car.