London is under attack by aliens! The Queen is in peril! Quick, call...the Americans! OK Nintendo, can't we leave the concept of Americans being able to save the world in Call of Duty or things like that? It shouldn't bug me this much, but the introduction goes in presenting London as the world capital in steam technology, and yet the heroes of the day are a gold-blond, square-jawed, dashing guy, a...female Native American...the lion from Oz...and Tom Sawyer.
My point still stands, dammit!
Anyway, these are impressions based on the demo, which I've found surprisingly long.
Codename S.T.E.A.M. is a turn-based strategy game from Intelligence System, and it shows. Missions are turn-based (all your chracters first, then the aliens), with each character able to perform actions as long as they have steam. Characters are controlled directly, with maps divided into tiles; as soon as your character enters a new one, he/she expends one steam point; there's no action undo, but you can backtrack to your starting tile to regain spent steam points, unless you fired a weapon: in this case the steam reserve is "locked" and you cannot regain any until the turn ends.
During your turn, you can control the available targets as you see fit, and you can jump between characters to move and attack them in succession; if a character has steam points left, he/she can enter overwatch: the character will open fire during the enemy turn when an alien is spotted and within weapon range.
The system also includes weak point (head- or back- shots), cover system, stuns, and a number of character-specific abilities; is is quite easy to get into it, but offers a lot of flexibility. It's not without faults however: the rules for triggering an attack during overwatch aren't quite clear (I've seen enemies entering a tile right in front of an overwatching character and then walzt away without my character doing anything); the enemy turn always takes too long to complete, and it's a huge break in momentum; the camera always follows a character, and getting a good idea on what's going on takes a lot of camera movement; missions are on the long side, but that's probably due to the enemies taking so long to take their turn.
This looks like a winner, rough in some places but so have been all Intelligent System games in their first version.
My point still stands, dammit!
Anyway, these are impressions based on the demo, which I've found surprisingly long.
Codename S.T.E.A.M. is a turn-based strategy game from Intelligence System, and it shows. Missions are turn-based (all your chracters first, then the aliens), with each character able to perform actions as long as they have steam. Characters are controlled directly, with maps divided into tiles; as soon as your character enters a new one, he/she expends one steam point; there's no action undo, but you can backtrack to your starting tile to regain spent steam points, unless you fired a weapon: in this case the steam reserve is "locked" and you cannot regain any until the turn ends.
During your turn, you can control the available targets as you see fit, and you can jump between characters to move and attack them in succession; if a character has steam points left, he/she can enter overwatch: the character will open fire during the enemy turn when an alien is spotted and within weapon range.
The system also includes weak point (head- or back- shots), cover system, stuns, and a number of character-specific abilities; is is quite easy to get into it, but offers a lot of flexibility. It's not without faults however: the rules for triggering an attack during overwatch aren't quite clear (I've seen enemies entering a tile right in front of an overwatching character and then walzt away without my character doing anything); the enemy turn always takes too long to complete, and it's a huge break in momentum; the camera always follows a character, and getting a good idea on what's going on takes a lot of camera movement; missions are on the long side, but that's probably due to the enemies taking so long to take their turn.
This looks like a winner, rough in some places but so have been all Intelligent System games in their first version.
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