Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor - Another overly complex mech game?

It cost £130 back in the days before Guitar Hero and Rock Band made £130 games commonplace. So few copies of Steel Battalion and its 40-button, three-stick, three-pedal, four-part controller made it to the UK that most were bought by eBay scalpers hoping to sell them on.

It was unique, and we'll never see its like again. Heavy Armor is the next best thing.

The story goes that Microsoft went to Capcom with an offer: if you had the budget and resources to make any game, what would you make?

The result was the ultimate mech simulator - giant walking robots which slowly clanked around battlefields ripping one another to pieces.

[Projekt7tuning]

I would love to see the finished product.
I wouldn't mind a proper Mechwarrior title. I thought Mechwarrior 5 was supposed to be out by now?

[Reibooi]

I would like to see another real and proper Steel Battalion not a Kinect game.

The original came out prior to the games that made the idea of paying over 100bucks for the game and the controller it needed plausible and now that people do it quite commonly for games like Rock Band I think it's a safe bet the game would sell better with that awesome controller now then it would have then. Not to mention graphics have jumped in quality since then making the game that much more realistic.

The original wasn't for everyone no doubt. But there was something just so surreal about playing it. It was a sim for something that doesn't exist and the sheer thought of that was awesome and more then that how hardcore the game was was just cool. Yes it was brutal but when you accomplished something you actually felt like you deserved and achieved something as opposed to feeling like you just got another kill on another kill streak.

It was a really ambitious game back then and I think it could be more successful now but I guess we will never know. I can tell you that playing the new one with a Kinect will not even come close to the awesome feeling of playing the original. It's still gonna feel cheesy and stupid having to flip invisible switches and push invisible buttons.

[STK026]

If this article is to be trusted, you won't have to push invisible switches, as kinect will be used for some stuff whiole most of the game will be played using a controller. I would still have prefered a massive controller like the one used for the first SB, but I guess a kinect/controller hybrid can probably pull it off.

[Reibooi]

Yeah I saw the bit about the controller and considering how the first game worked I would assume that this version will have the sticks used for the camera and movement and some other key things such as the Eject and probably the use of weapons.

But the start up sequence and the various other in depth bits will more then likely be using the Kinect to use invisible buttons. Really if you think about it that's the only way the Kinect can be used in the game as those are the only parts that don't need to be really accurate. And yet still I'm sure it will cause problems.

Even if everything works perfectly(which is highly unlikely given the complexity the first game had) It still won't come close to the feeling of having the giant controller and pedals the original had.

Me getting it or not depends on if you HAVE to have Kinect to play it. If you don't then I'll give it a shot just because I loved the original. But if you need Kinect I won't bother as I'm not gonna waste all that money for a game that more then likely will have problems in the control department. The only exception would be if it gets like perfect scores across the board which I don't see happening even if it worked really well.

[fatalred alarm]

this looks like a day one to me, and i guess we could assume this will be the first proper core kinect game

[fatalred alarm]

@ people disagreeing, is there any other core kinect game at this moment then?

[STK026]

So, it does use a controller after all, count me in then.

[Lavalamp]

"The new game supports Kinect, but Kinect isn't man enough for From Software's team, so expect a controller-driven mech with an onscreen 'virtual HUD' powered by motions, gestures, and head-tracking."

You mean, I can use my controller? You've just made me a potential customer. Thank you, From Software.