Requested by: Sokki
Game by: Nitrome, www.Nitrome.com
Play it here

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Quicksmasher's Review to ::
STEAMLANDS

- - - Overview - - -

The great war left Europe in ruins... After the last war machine had been silenced, the people were struggling to rebuild civilization.
Pirates in great steam ranks now roam the lands, and a mercenary tank commander must venture forth through the wastelands of New Britannia...

A fresh production from the house of Nitrome trying and eventually succeeding in combining Strategy, Shooting, Defense and Building Up game elements into one big game with an actually existing story featured in one campaign.

- - - Gameplay - - -

As we hopefully all know, strategy games are nothing without rich and well, DELICIOUS strategy. Action games without action? Same thing. Building games where you can't build stuff? Okay, okay, enough of the examples, let's go back to the review ...

Steamlands keeps you busy and gives you a lot of duties you have to take care of at the same time. Focusing the view on all the building possibilities alone, you're able to use, repair and upgrade any kind of armor tile you find (and you can find some stuff), beginning at small bronze blocks over bigger metal armors up to gigantic iron boulders, and able to refit them just the way you want to. Your little war machine may look the way you want.

The Gun Placement is, HANDS DOWN, a science for itself. A Steamlands Wiki could fill good hundred pages. The firepower available is heavily depending on your building strategy. Don't you want to have some cool hidden guns pecking away from save coordinates for slow but guaranted hits? Or some blasters sticking right on your front end, allowing you to watch explosions?

From the more or less lovely combat perspective, it's up to you how you get the work done. Specialising in offense or defense, being able to drive and evade to get unstoppably further while targeting with your offensive war machine tiles you can let be individual guns just as well as gun gropus tied to keys to make macro and micro possible sure means some good fun. You eventually ask yourself at the end of a mission, if you are playing a strategy, a shooting, defense or a building up game ...

The game is played not TOO hard, drag and drop and an easy targeting system for your lil' tank are anytime ready for you to be used, simplifying the nice interface for you. You can do anything for any purpose you aim for (slow but granted firepower, offense but risky gun placing, defensive building up, etc), and still, all can be achieved anytime. So, ACTUALLY, the game succesfully combines strategy, shooting, defense and building up game elements, just not everyone likes it (keyword: mainstream gamers who can't brace themselfes to get some complex gameplay under their control). The gameplay is balanced, the mission design is nice, the story appealing and the right complexity to top it all for the matters of good gameplay.

- - - Presentation - - -

The gameplay is a great combo of many elements, but do gameplay and the as-well combo of many elements game part "atmosphere & design" combine well with each other?

Nope, they don't.

Hell, the tiles are boring, the colors are boring, the design is old, too old even for that game. The interface and the main menu might not be too bad, but the for the INSANE amount of tiles for your war machine Steam Lands offers, they put like totally NO ideas into them. The armor sets, the guns, everything should differ more, building up is half fun because of the seeminlgy endless amount of the nearly same armor tiles and guns.

I don't want to rate the game low because of one minor issue because this indeed is laughably small, but they made a small "mistake" right in the wrong place.

Sometimes, huge mistakes combined with the gameplay disturb way less than small mistakes absolutely bounded to the gameplay.

Let's give out the points for steamlands now:

- - - Score Giving - - -

CONCEPT
[G] Main Idea & Transfer 9 / 10
Creativity & Innovation 5 / 5

ATMOSPHERE
[G] General Style 7 / 10
Graphics & Animations 7 / 10
Music 5 / 7
Sounds 3 / 3

LIVELINESS
[G] Story 7 / 10
Presentation & envolvment 2 / 5

GENRE SPECIFIC: STRATEGY
[G] Gameplay 22 / 25
Building up 7 / 8
Micro, Macro & Shortcut support 6 / 7

BONUSES
Dev Mode +3
Extreme compact HUD on any screen +3

Altogether: 86 / 100; 8 / 10 | A stunningly fun game full of ideas!

- - - Conclusion FAQ - - -

Can I discover totally new things when playing this game?
Yes, you can. The gameplay feels unique in some way.

Is it underrated by mainstream gamers?
It indeed is underrated, It deserves a sightly higher score in my opinion.

I am into Strategy games. Would I like this game?
Totally. When being an experienced micro, macro or shortcut master, you'll consider several implementation ideas genius! All in all, this game is a content heavy strategy masterpiece where the developers decided to implement things you rather know from other genres.

I am into Shooting games. Would I like this game?
Probably, at the beginning, no. But if you brace yourself and beat a bit through unlike mainstream gamers do, you'll consider the game definitely "more than interesting" and probably, it will refresh a few of your ideas and inspire you.

I am into building up games. Would I like this game?
The tiles are boring. However, you can see how your war machine is becoming stronger and stronger, and you can adapt many things. Therefore, yes, you would like the game and you shouldn't miss it when you enjoyed other games.

I am into defense games. Would I like this game?
Unlike in Defense games like Age of War and even a few Tower Defense games, you will be here way more busy than you expect. If you feel like playing a defense game, better not start with Steamlands. You'll have to do too many too different things there, too.

Back to the -RRC- Index

First comes the most important thing, THANKS Kwikz for bringing this feature on LikwidGames. Second you got my thanks for making my requested review. Well now, I'll read it and re-edit my post to tell you what I think

re-edit post:



I really move my hats off to you Kwikz If I didn't knew who developed this game, by reading your review I would though that you are behind this game

Now I have only few small things that kinda bugged me And those are:
- Presentation, isn't that the conclusion ?
- your pointing system, which is good, but it might be kinda too complex. Cause you see most of the readers would be curious only in few things such as: Gameplay, Music, Sounds, Graphics, Bonus, Story, Concept.. (and maybe more or less) cause few of the subcategories on your pointing system were kinda strange to me.. (^cough: Presentation & envolvment ^another cough)
- if there is a pointing system, cause I've saw you rate differently for every area, then you should illuminate us

GJ with the Conclusion FAQ its awesome, few FAQ are really the red cherry on top of a beautiful cake.

Now Kwikz, I really don't want to tell you to how to or not to create YOUR reviews, cause they are yours and they are specific to you only I'm only telling things taht I like or don't like And I would be pleased if my comment was any helpful for you

Keep up the good work, I'll have another request in a few days (rest a little bit)

Ough and I forgot this thing hehe

i think that all games should have more levels

I agree with you completely, Sokki. I'm going to make other reviews more simple ... and probably a bit shorter because that one turned out to be waaay longer than I originally planned

Either way, thank you for your review analysis!

Probably you wanted to impress me and you did great job! I do that also, whenever I like to show of to someone

Presentation =/= Conclusion

=)