Z: Steel Soldiers (PC)

Digitised comic-style pictures convey the storyline in cut-scenes, with added split-screen and a mixture of cod American and British accents. The story starts with a peace agreement on the table when two stray junior units bring down what looks like an enemy ship, dragging you back to a centuries-old conflict.

Territory is captured via stationary flag posts and this facilitates unit movement, especially as the enemy only appears on sight. There are few peaceful moments in the game--you're given the briefing and you've got to keep your finances up by wiping out the enemy and capturing ground instead of by C&C-style resource management. The problems are more familiar, with sluggish and sometimes unintelligent robots, although since the construction robots repair the warrior units, they are of course deliberately slower at times, forcing you to group them up. This can be mastered, but the camera takes longer--this 3-D system still doesn't beat Ground Control or Earth 2150 for the flexibility of views.

So what made the original ahead of its time--the pure speed of gameplay required--is also ZSS's major attraction. As its robot vs robot there's next to no blood, and the maximum install is around 650 MB. If you want a strategy game that pushes you into a constant, chess-like state of war, look no further--it's certainly one of the faster RTS games released, and, as it's only the first sequel, the gap in time has done the gameplay as much good as the graphics. --Kenneth Henry

The frantic non-stop action of the first title has been carried over into the second. The point and click interface allows you to control almost every aspect of the game without touching the keyboard. This in turn allows quicker manipulation of your troops when time is of the essence. Attacks can come at any moment and with the improved artificial intelligence they come often. The desperation to gain territory to increase income sometimes seems to take over and you forget that you're there to perform a set of tasks. This doesn't detract from the game however, and after a few restarted games you soon realise that while you're out there trying to make money, that the enemy are back at your place trying to wipe you off the map.

The game bears a striking resemblance to Red Alert 2. Obviously the viewpoint is adjustable in Steel Soldiers and the graphics are superior but when it comes down to the crunch, the games are virtually the same. The keyboard controls seem as if they could have been copied from each other's manuals, but this does allow for easy transition between the two games.

I would personally recommend that everyone should go out and buy this game. I don't care that you don't own a computer; this is a good enough reason to go and buy a PC!


Lock and load   June 12, 2001
hendao@hotmail.com (Glasgow, Scotland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Being a fan of RTS games I was more than interested in this title. I haven't played the original but heard it was great fun. This theme has been continued in Z2. This is not a funny version of Red Alert or Cossacks. What we have here is a much faster moving arcade type RTS game. You don't have time to build up huge armies and create a detailed plan of attack. In this case you have to get stuck in from the outset. The units themselves are excellent with some good variation. Although, they are mainly based on conventional armamaments. In addition the graphics are superb and graphical performance can be tweaked over a wide range depending on the capabilities of the system. Having said that I would recommend playing this game on a machine with a minimum of 128MB and at least a 750MhZ processor as it is quite hungry for system resources. A very good game but I had some trouble with my mouse, thus four stars.