Titans of Steel

For those of you out there that enjoy hex-based strategy games with a heavy dose of RPG elements that just happens to be about giant fighting robots, then I have a game for you: Titans of Steel: Warring Suns! And as if giant fighting robots wasn't enough, the game is free!

I remember spending hours playing the original TOS about 8-10 years ago, and it was a blast. Since them, Vicious Byte has created another version (thus the "Warring Suns") which has the same core game play mechanics but greatly expands on the graphics and sound. The original was... well let's just say that for the time it looked okay and if you turned off the music it was alright. The following review applies to both games. It should be noted that the original is a measly 8MB compared to Warring Sun's 297MB.

The game itself is composed of three parts (which unfortunately is still confusing, although now at least tied together with a better menu system). First you have Head Quarters, in which you manage a team of Titan pilots. Here you can hire new pilots, assign them to titans, and spend their experience points on skills. This allows you to specialize your pilots to specific Titans, such as a pilot that is best with energy weapons on medium titans and is skilled in electronic warfare. We'll call him Frank.

Next up you have the Factory. This is honestly the part I love the most. Here you can build, repair, and modify titans. If we are so inclined we can build Frank a nice medium titan chock full of energy weapons. We have to balance multiple factors to create a good titan: weight, space, heat dissipation, ammunition, armor, weapons, and goodies. There is nothing as frustrating as overheating your titan after just two shots with your Plasma Rifle because you skimped on the heat regulator. The game provides some features to help you out, such as a "pinboard" that lets you quickly check the strong and weak points in your design. There are a ton of pre-made titans, but it's too much fun to make your own.

And if you build your own, you can feel a sense of pride when you enter the battle mode and demolish your enemies! The hex map, terrain bonuses, fog of war, and turn based system is nothing new or special, but it is genuinely fun. Part of the enjoyment comes from the shear amount of strategies and options that you have available to you. This game is so complex that you can spend hours playing one battle carefully moving your pieces as if it were a chess game: fast units scouting the enemy position under the cover of long range units and then linking scanners back to the indirect fire units so that they can launch rockets from the other side of the map. Or you can go a more simple route such as, "HAHA! Who would have though Frank's titan runs really fast and has two chainsaws!?! VVRRRRRRRR!!!!!"

The game does have a major drawback: it is confusing. The user interface for the battle mode is excellent and takes only a modest amount of tool tip reading to understand, but the rest of the interface is difficult to use. The problem is compounded by the lack of a back or save / load feature. If you make a mistake, there is no going back, if your pilot dies he's gone (remember that your titan has an eject button!). Overall all though, this is still a great game.

Just to give you an idea of how fun this game is, I came home from work today and played it for four hours straight. And I just bought Rock Band 2 yesterday. Well, so the real reason I'm not playing Rock Band right now is I was kindly reminded yesterday that I have downstairs neighbors. And by reminded I mean they were knocking on my door five songs in. So until I figure out how to play the drums quietly, I have to keep my rocking out to a minimum.

Anyway, here is a short interview with the four members of Vicious Byte: Interview