Destructoid Changelog - My Summer Mech

Happy New Year, chums. Here’s hoping that this one somehow goes better than the last. Thanks for sticking with us through this slow period. Things will hopefully pick back up starting next week.

I didn’t do anything exciting for New Year’s. Long story. Played some My Summer Car, but there’s more on that below.

Remember that if you refer a friend to sign up to this newsletter using the link below, you’ll start receiving the monthly special edition of this newsletter. Cool. Every month, I interview a cool developer. Last month, it was none other than Ben Cocuzza of Puppet Combo fame (Christmas Massacre, Stay Out of the House). This month, it’s going to be Jack King-Spooner, one of the devs behind one of 2024’s weirdest games, Judero. It’s worth sitting someone down and giving them the newsletter pitch.

Steel Battalion

I just couldn’t put my OG Xbox away until I took another lap with Steel Battalion. Yes, I own the 44-button monstrosity of a controller that is required to play the game. It’s every bit as ridiculous as you’d expect. Two joysticks, three pedals, a throttle, some toggles, and a whole lot of buttons.

The opening to the game is a bit predictable. It’s your first day at VT (vertical tank) pilot boot camp, but before your CO can get around to calling you a maggot, the camp gets attacked. You decide to just jump into the nearby VT to fight off the attackers. Your CO (wounded at the time) yells to stop you, and you yell back – and I swear this is actually what they say – that you will just figure it out by reading the manual.

It’s so amazing. Your character pushes past all these mechanics and engineers who are probably more qualified to pilot the thing. I can just imagine them sweating over a book, as they try to figure out how to turn it on.

Except, it’s kind of accurate to how you’re supposed to learn Steel Battalion. There’s no training mode. You get a rather hefty manual that goes over how to pilot the VT. The basics are rather easy to work out. Even the startup sequence, which has multiple steps that you perform each time, is made intuitive by having the pertinent buttons light up on your control panel. It definitely looks more intimidating than it is.

The hard part is really getting a feel for your mech. There is a solid chance that one of the first things you’ll do after exiting the garage is fall over. If you turn too sharply at too high of a speed, your robot will take a topple. Once it stops grinding across the pavement, you just hit the gas pedal to get back up, but you’re vulnerable while you’re on the ground. I still haven’t stopped falling over occasionally. It always seems to me that a VT will lose its footing easily, so I rarely use the full mobility of the left stick.

The other concept I have trouble with is effective range. Missiles only work well from long distances, while heavy machine guns can only penetrate up close. I find myself unable to hit anything at a range, and I always seem to wind up surrounded when I get in close.

It’s a lot to learn, and Steel Battalion is absolutely brutal. If your VT starts exploding (or sinking in deep water), you have a small window of time to hit the eject button, which is kept under a clear shutter. In campaign, if you don’t eject, your pilot dies, and your saved game is deleted. No continuing.

Even if you do eject, you have to have enough money (or supply points, whatever) to afford a new VT. If you can’t afford to continue, the game calls you a worthless loser and deletes your save. There are over 20 missions, and they only get harder, so it’s hard to really get a feel for and practice later missions in the game.

My current strategy for getting through Steel Battalion is by using a cheat that unlocks all the levels in Free Play mode. This means I can practice the mission individually there before taking it on for real in the main campaign mode. It’s still a rough time, but at least I’m not losing my progress each time I make a mistake in a mission.

But, really, Steel Battalion is all about the experience. It really makes you feel like you’re piloting a hulking machine of war. It’s really just unfortunate that the controller itself has no real use outside of the Xbox. I could technically use it on PC with a USB adapter, but I’ve never quite worked up the gumption. The thing is just a work of art that deserves better. There was a multiplayer-only sequel that it worked with, Steel Battalion: Line of Contact, and that was it.

Years later (2012), Capcom tapped FromSoftware to make a sequel, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. Not only did it not use the legendary controller, but it instead was made for the Xbox Kinect. It wound up being a really interesting take on the series, but it was also a showcase for everything wrong with the Kinect. It was bordering on unplayable. The Kinect is no substitute for a massive, physical controller. Or any kind of controller, really.

Elsewhere on Destructoid

You can now play the original version of Halo, before it was an FPS

Halo hit when I was in high school. I didn’t own an Xbox back then, but a friend of mine was all about it. My friend clique would occasionally play 8-player networked. Good times. But at that time, I was shown a pre-release video for when Halo was going to be a Mac-exclusive title. I’m pretty sure it’s the same version that’s being shown off in this “Speartest” build. And now it’s playable! That’s pretty neat.

Godzilla Studio Toho is making a Exit 8 live action adaptation

I played through Exit 8 earlier this year, and I wouldn’t have really pegged it as ripe for a live-action adaptation. The article kind of explains the game in a bit of a weird way, but essentially, it has you moving through a version of a subway station hallway that repeats after a certain point. Each time it repeats, you need to look for something in the environment that’s different. An “anomaly.” If you spot one, you turn back and continue on. When you find all the anomalies, you are then able to escape.

So, there aren’t really any characters, and the whole game is a big “spot the difference” affair. Not really sure how that can be adapted, but stranger things have happened.

Believe it or not, My Summer Car is fully assembled and ready to leave Early Access

Since it hit Early Access in 2016, My Summer Car has been one of my favorite games. It’s complicated. I appreciate its brutal life simulator side (which, coincidentally, has a similar death-deletes-your-save system as Steel Battalion) and complicated car-assembly. More than anything, I appreciate that the entire design philosophy is clearly its creator making the game he wants to play.

Anyway, it’s nearly out of Early Access with its last update having been released a few days ago. It certainly isn’t a grand way for it to fully launch – the update is far from the biggest the game has seen – but the biggest thing to take away from this news is that we’re closing in on the launch of My Winter Car. Without hyperbole, the release of My Winter Car could fix all my problems.

G-Man voice actor just made cryptic tweet seemingly pointing at Half-Life 3

I have a lot of history with the Half-Life series, but honestly, I’m not terribly excited about the prospect of a Half-Life 3. It’s complicated. Nonetheless, it would be a big deal if Half-Life 3 finally hit. How long has it been since the Orange Box? The hints keep dropping that it could be announced soon, and you can pile on a cryptic message from G-Man himself to the evidence that we might be taking up the crowbar again soon.

Reviews for review this week

Nope

Yep, still nothing. Might change for next week. The release schedule is starting to pick up.

For now, I’ve finally picked up Armored Core 6. I have a history with the series, but my main point of reference is Armored Core 4 on PS3, which I absolutely hated. The prevailing memory is getting constantly chastised for leaving the combat area. That’s thankfully not a problem here. I’m really enjoying it, though I feel somewhat restricted by the customization choices. I haven’t found my perfect build yet, but maybe that’s reason to keep playing.