Collection essentials #589: Steel Battalion (Xbox)

A lot of video games don’t truly try to be realistic. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of arcade racing games, for example, place you in what seems to be a real-life car, but the controls are simplified and the physics of the vehicle aren’t the same as in real life. Sometimes, you don’t want things in video games to be as complex or restricted as they are in real life, and reducing realism can lead to more fun.

But some video games are designed with the point of being as realistic as possible, using that as a selling point. That’s not typically something I’m super into, but sometimes there can be exceptions. In the early 2000s, some developers for some wild reason thought that they’d better take this approach in a video game with an activity that doesn’t even exist in real life: piloting a giant war robot. And they went so far with it that they decided to design an entirely unique, complex, huge, insane controller that resembles what an actual control panel inside a giant robot might look like. This of course meant the game and its controller would be quite expensive and therefore niche and not very profitable, but they went ahead with it anyway. This isn’t the type of game I normally play, but the results are so impressive that it won me over.

When you start a game of Steel Battalion, you have to actually start up your robot as if it were a real machine. You need to flip switches and press buttons on the massive controller to run the boot sequence. Once you’re on the battlefield, you need to consider things that you normally don’t in fantasy video games, like the possibility of your momentum during a turn causing you to fall over, your machine overheating, and your windshield getting dirty. The game incorporates “permadeath” as well. That is, if your robot has taken too much damage and is on the verge of destruction, you must eject yourself out of the cockpit to safety or else your save file will be deleted because of your death! The game goes so big into realism that they don’t even give you a pause button.

The actual game itself, other than the realism elements, isn’t anything too out of the ordinary. The story is pretty basic, and the mission-based campaign isn’t super long. But the game is quite challenging, so mastering it will take quite a bit of time. There are a variety of mechs you can buy and pilot with a variety of attributes, too. Unfortunately, there’s no multiplayer…but how many people would realistically have a second controller to play with anyway??

I believe I first discovered Steel Battalion from hearing about it on the early 2000s video game review show “X-Play,” where it was featured on a one-time segment called “Games for Rich B***ards.” While I didn’t immediately go seek it out, it sounded intriguing and stuck in my mind. Years later I had a chance to try it out for the first time while visiting Gideon Zhi back when he lived in my area. And eventually I had a great opportunity to actually buy the game. I got it from a guy named Joe who I had met online due to his gaming youTube channel. He happened to live on the other side of the state I’m in, and since my sister works in that area I was able to get her to pick it up for me rather than pay a bunch in shipping costs!

I’ve only spent a precious short time in my life with Steel Battalion, and I’ve never come close to mastering it. But, dangit, it’s such a freakin’ cool game and controller, it’s got to be in my collection. This is one of those cool pieces to bust out and amaze visitors who have never seen it before. I’m not sure we’ll ever see a peripheral quite like this ever again. For that, it deserves its place as an essential my collection.