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Z: Steel Soldiers
(hx) 11:30 PM CEST - Jun,23 2001
Z: Steel Soldiers is a 3D action/arcade-RTS game, the sequel to Bitmap Brothers' previous 2D action-RTS game Z released in 1996. The story behind the game is based on robotic life forms that have been at war with each other and have only now come to a peace agreement. However, because of the comic nature of the entire game story and a trigger happy commanding officer, the war looks as if it will continue. Alike to original Z, in Z: Steel Soldiers you take charge of a various army of robots fighting for a corporation, controlling individual units, building units and structures, and eventually wiping the enemy off the map. Each mission in the game is started off with a cartoon cutscenes, rendered in a deliberately old-fashioned comic book style that gives enough insight as to why you're doing what you're doing in each mission. The game features six realistic 3D environment - each world type that battle takes place upon has own unique 3D landscape including desert, volcanic, forest, arctic, wasteland, and archipelago worlds. In addition Z: Steel Soldiers includes full naval and air force to command as well as the robotic infantry and armored fighting vehicles from the first game, in total there are 30 unit types (infantry, technicians, snipers, construction robots etc) and 20 building types (also unique facilities include Teleport and Shield Generator) for the player to experiment with. The multiplayer gives you the chance to enter into a Skirmish game with up to 7 simulated opponents or a choice of human and simulated opponents. Z: Steel Soldiers can be played online or on a LAN with up to a maximum of 8 players, certainly with various types of multiplayer game (including timed, resource based, unit based and objective based game play environments). So how you can see, the biggest difference compared to Z is 3D graphics. The game utilizes an impressive fully 3D graphics engine which features a fully controllable rotating, zooming, panning camera and crap like that :) . Also weapons look cool with lighting effects, as well as explosions and buildings, vehicles and units, which are nicely detailed and articulated. The bullets scar the sand and water accurately reflects the surroundings, just candies for your eyes... But if you own anything less than a PIII 800 with 128MB RAM and a 32MB 3D card you'll have to turn off some advanced graphics features and not enjoy the full visual glory of the game :( Although the game is not an evolutionary jump, Z: Steel Soldiers manages to offer up an enjoyable, and fast-paced tactical game for all RTS' fans. Certainly some players rather prefers the complex micromanagement and careful planning (like Cossacks), but I'm sure those that liked the original Z will certainly want this game as will many other strategy fans :) You can try this playable demo (30.2MB).
snd: 4/5 - repetitive background music, some nice ambient sound effects, hyper-aggressive industrial techno will drive you crazy :P
gfx: 4/5 -
impressive fully 3D, nice lighting effects and explosions, well done cartoon cutscenes, some minor graphical glitches, seemingly unfinished object graphics
playability: 4/5 -
30 missions and both skirmish and multiplayer modes (up to 8 players), great AI, both sides use the same units :(, missions can be very long, maps can seem repetitive
                    
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last 10 comments:
| papagallo | posted - May, 14 2002 - 10:17 | | Actually, what you are discussing is a matter of taste. I've started playins RTS with Dune 2. I've watched the film Dune, and love the concept, even though making energy out of worm shits was silly at first site, the relations and the behaviour of the houses was great. Almost forgot to say that I've read the book too, before the game and after the film. Dune 2 was great. Dune 2000 was deep shit. Dune: Emperor was great, with visuals and gameplay. So Z is too. The first Z was very fun to play and introduced non-energy collecting, pure assoult gameplay, with robots each with unique specs and vehicles for them to ride. Z2 is fun either. But neither Dune, nor Z can cope with Starcraft in case of pure gameplay and strategy vise. This is MY taste. About needed specs. You don't need ghz CPU's or gigantic RAMS such as 1GB. You only need a solid 3D graphics card, thats all! Do you know you can play Spiderman the Movie at 1024x768x32 > 30fps all the time with a PIII-600 and a min GeForce3 Ti200? This card operates at 250Mhz of core speed which can take all the hard Texture & lightning calculations off the CPU. Go sell your memory, your CPU and get yourself a decent graphics card I should advise. Until then, you'll come up with 1GB of memory which its 725MB is empty all the time, and a >Ghz CPu thats limited to a mere 400Mhz in case of gameplay.
Sincerely. |
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| Xces | posted - Jun, 25 2001 - 11:06 | | I love this game. It is a true competetor of Dune3k |
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| inlook | posted - Jul, 06 2001 - 16:08 | | No way... it kind of the Dun3k "joke" version... it's not "serious" (like my english spelling), and if an AMD 1.4 is LAGGY with this baby, then u sure don't want to tweak her breasts on a slower ride man!!! And then it's all so patetic with the movies, so don't even TELL or SAY that it even come near DUNE2, now way.... DUNE is something that this baby don't even can emulate in her ass! It's a JOKE, nothing more, nothing else! I mean... here we have 3D game popping out like semen in a cunt and everyone thing that everything that DO come out from the pussy is good, NO WAY, look att Adolf Hitler and u see what I mean, so.... Z is no exeption, it's kind of giving a VERY bad of ideas to kid's when it "PLAY" with the teme of "DEATH", here it all just is "FUN", but it is NOT FUN, it is NO JOKE, death in games MUST have a meaning to be good, and if a company think it can JOKE about that, then it should not even try to fuck with the audience, and this means as follows: only QUALITY 3D games that DON'T LAG, and NOT ANY "limited" run-box game where u can fuck a limited space and don't roam, here Z is running way down the pipeline! Also, the GUI stink, and one can't even control how the damn units are going to extract and so on.... Damn, it was so damn boring that I even installed this baby on a 166 Mhz to just get the CORRECT FEELING, and hues what, the shit did not even start! fuck! Today, so many bad coders try to HIDE their shitty engines behind fast processors, but MARK my words: ALL GOOD GAMES CAN RUN/START on even a 133Mhz, and here we have the ultimate downfall for Z, and when we speak about Z, then I hope u all remember ther FIRST "Z" game, that one stink as much as this one, so if u are a die-hard action gamer, then u play DUNE3k or something else but this baby, since it's so penetraded by elepants that it won't give any plessure at all :( |
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| | | posted - Jul, 06 2001 - 19:56 | | I THINK YOU AN IDIOT INLOOK 166MhZ is slow where do live in a black pit with no technology? They have Ghz machines now, thats right giga-hertz machines.
DO YOU KNOW what a computer is? |
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| wanderingmoose | posted - Jul, 27 2001 - 04:00 | | Have to agree with inlook. I run a 1.0 g PIII machine with 1 gig ram, not the best video card, but it has no problem with other high poly games.
There were times with this game that I was not sure if it was going to lock up. Hell there were times when the action was moving so slow I could go get a drink out of the fridge and not miss anything...lol
I beleive unless we start demanding better games,we are just going to get product like this.( all in the name of getting more of your dollars.)
But with software one can not try before you buy. Demo's do not count. They are rarely the same as the full game.
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