Finally, Kinect got its first hardcore game and with high intensity too. Steel Battalion is the most precise kinect game at this day, which is a huge part of how cool this game is. The only problem is that the Kinect sensor isn’t efficient enough, meaning that the Kinect isn’t ready for games with precision like in Steel Battalion. This is pretty sad as it ruins the game experience for me, and it actually made me so frustrated sometimes that I had to turn it off several times. This is kind of unfair to the game Capcom actually made, which is a great and intense game. Well, at least when the sensor can read you right that is.

Story

The Story takes you out to the future 2082 where technology has been abandoned and Kina are going for total world domination. Kina already control almost every soldier in the world which is the UN. Fortunately the Americans and Russians are two strong nations that won’t take this domination without a fight, and you will be right in the middle of it all.

Gameplay

You are playing as a pilot of a Vertical Tank also known as VT. As a VT pilot do you have a lot of functions that you have to use when you’re on the battlefield, and I can tell you that it will be really intense sometimes. Taking damage is a bad thing in this game, but when is that a good time? Anyway, the damage your VT takes will not be repaired during the missions, meaning that your VT can and will be destroyed if you’re not too careful. The feeling of “It’s just like you’re right there on the battlefield” is created by the whole piloting part.

It’s not just enough to use the controller to walk and fire, but you also have to switch back and forth in the cockpit to do different tasks. For instance when you looking for enemies in some parts of the game do you have to stand up just to climb out of the hatch, and use you binoculars with raising your left arm to your head. Other parts is that you have to start the VT after the motor have been started by your engineer, and if you take too much damage and smoke starts to fill the cockpit do you have to use the right instruments to ventilate it. There are also other features that will get you the right feeling right away.

Enemies

Some enemies seem indestructible, and they are. At least until you either restart the mission or just get your self killed. This only goes for the enemy VT’s, at least that’s what I’ve encountered several times, so I would say that this is a major glitch in the gameplay. Of course how much ammo you have to use on the enemies depends on where you hit them, but that don’t make them indestructible just hard to kill. Besides the VT’s, will you encounter infantry with different firearms, but the only infantry weapon that damage you is the rpg. Which is a good thing as you will encounter a lot of infantry.

Developing

Finally it seem like the developers have found out that to make a hardcore Kinect game, do you have to use at least some kind of controller if you don’t want it to fail like Blackwater did. With that understandings will hopefully other developers continue the great work on this matter so we can have more hardcore games for the Kinect in the future. Unfortunately is there some limitation of what they can do as the Kinect it self have been created with equipment that limits the potential.

Conclusion: The fact that the game are struggling during gameplay is not Capcom’s fault, they created a game that give you hours of cool and intense action.

Rating: 7/10