Reviews / previews
In Fighting Steel, developer Divide by Zero sought to create a "real-time war game in 3D," and, in good measure, it has succeeded. Though flawed, this naval combat game from the creators of SSI's Great Naval Battles line is nevertheless exciting and accessible.
While it appears amid a sudden crush of 3D naval games--Fleet Command and Man of War II already out and the 2D/3D Harpoon IV still to come--Fighting Steel nevertheless finds its niche. It's the first World War II-based 3D naval game since MicroProse's celebrated Task Force 1942 in the early '90s.
You command up to four divisions of as many as five ships apiece--from speedy destroyers up to battleships with 18.1-inch guns--during the period from 1939 to 1942. The 14 scenarios (two of them tutorials) include the era's classic ship-to-ship engagements--including the Battle of the River Plate and the pursuit of the Bismarck--and four campaigns (US, British, Japanese and German) balance fleet management with historical or fantasy battles.
Fundamentally, Fighting Steel does what it does well. The ships--shown from a maneuverable 3D view--are rendered right down to the flags. (Oddly, the only thing that doesn't look realistic is the rather stick-like guns.) The broadsides rattle the windows--the audio gives you a real sense of the battle-and the sight of the big ships firing during a night battle, with fire boiling out of the guns and erupting from their targets, is inspiring. The water spouts erupting from near misses feels authentic and the way the bows cut through the water is perfect. The point-and-click interface, with pop-up explanations of each icon, is generally efficient and easy to pick up.
And, in fact, Fighting Steel does feel like a "real-time war game in 3D" rather than a simulation. Divide by Zero has walked that delicate line very carefully. You're likely to deal with divisions more than with individual warships. You don't have to control the guns in detail, but can choose from three targeting modes for main and secondary guns based on range, threat and whether an enemy is otherwise engaged. The demands of a sim drawn on this scale might have been overwhelming, but Fighting Steel feels manageable.
Unfortunately, out of the box, it's also a bit buggy. (Since release, it has been patched four times to the current v. 1.10 beta.) On two different machines, the game exhibited a tendency to exit spontaneously to the desktop on my PIII/550 while I performed functions as mundane as changing gunnery modes or trying to start an Internet or LAN game. (A couple of small battles over our office LAN were brisk and engaging.) The Battle Generator, which keeps up a stream of new scenarios built to your spec (a scenario editor is also included), repeatedly reassigned to January scenarios I sought to build in December. The onscreen "tags" that identity other ships sometimes flickered wildly and their locations sometimes didn't match the ones on the inset map.
Moreover, the controls aren't quite as intuitive as I'd like. To adjust your course in the 3D view, you first have to order a unit to turn right or left and then select a course--rather than an absolute system under which you'd simply order up a new heading--and I found myself involuntarily setting my ships on circular courses. (You can also play in a 2D mode.)
Good as the sound is, I never seemed to hear the secondary guns fire. And I'd like to have seen more detail and variety. Ships tend go down into the sea in uninteresting ways-splitting in the middle or simply turning over on their sides. The ocean appears to be tile-based and each tile displays the same pattern. When enabled, the cloud pattern scrolls ceaselessly from left to right. And the weather iswell, there is no weather. I can understand the absence of land or actual aircraft and submarines, but fog and rain squalls might have added an enjoyable game of hide-and-seek.
But it's the only conceptual omission. Fighting Steel wasn't a pure pleasure cruise, but I enjoyed myself more than I didn't. Here's hoping SSI and Divide by Zero take it out to sea again.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
Got an opinion about Fighting Steel? Or maybe know a good cheat or strategy? Share it with the world!