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> Results: Steel Horizon
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Mild Violence: GamerDad found animated sequences of ships being attacked and sinking, but not detailed enough to see any individuals. Language: GamerDad found slightly salty language in some of the cutscenes or combat briefings, but less than you'd see in a primetime broadcast TV show. Steel Horizon is an attempt to mix real-time and turn based strategy elements into a hybrid portable wargame. Players start out as a new commander of one of three types of warships and progress through a campaign set in the World War II Pacific Theater (that gets slightly fictional as the campaign progresses). The game is played out as a series of scenarios where players construct ships at home ports (which also provide funds for future ship production), then join these ships into fleets and move them around a scenario map in a turn-based fashion. When enemy ships are sighted and engaged, the game changes over into a real-time battle where the player can assign very simple commands (almost like suggestions) to individual ships as the battle plays out. While the turn based portion of the game is engaging, the real-time battles do not offer players significant input into the outcome of the battles. This can be good, as the battle will typically be won or lost based on the composition of the fighting fleets, but players hoping to micromanage their ships in battle with often be frustrated with the limited options available.  The turn based strategy side of the game is very similar to other games in the genre as players attempt to put together fleets of ships that work well together. Capturing a port increases a player's income and provides a location to produce more ships. A rock-scissors-paper type of effect encourages diverse fleets, as fleets of one specific type of ship will be vulnerable to attack by ships of the appropriate type. In general, battleships are effective against destroyers which defeat submarines which are effective against battleships. Specialty ships, like repair ships and mine layers, are also present and give additional strategic opportunities. The campaign game follows the career of a fresh captain in charge of one of three different capital ships (chosen by the player). This ship is a superior example of that ship category, more effective in combat, but if it is defeated the scenario ends in failure. When scenarios are completed, the player may spend points to upgrade various features of their capital ship and even some features that affect their entire fleet. On the whole, this is a good game, but not great. The real-time aspects of the game are poorly explained in the manual and in the online tutorials, but even when they are fully grasped they do not give the player a feel of control over the battle. Ships can be assigned specific targets or told to move to new locations but, as is appropriate for a naval simulation, everything seems to have a slow response. The most significant aspect of the real-time combat is activating the special powers of some ships when they're present within the combat. With such low interaction during the battles, the game may have been improved with combat simply resolved quickly without player input. The turn-based strategy portion of the game has some nice depth, with each type of ship having strengths and weaknesses. As with good games of this type, there are never enough spots for number and types of ships you want to add, forcing players to make choices. Some of the ships (like submarines) have very low movement, making their use a very tiresome exercise of move, end turn, move, end turn, etc... just to get near enemy territory. On the whole, Steel Horizon is a solid contribution to portable strategy gaming, but isn't going to inspire anyone who isn't already a fan of strategy naval combat. 
The game is about war, but at a strategic level. Ships get attacked, blow up, and sink but the human aspect of these consequences is not brought into the picture. There is some salty language, primarily in the cut scenes involving the slightly grumpier superior, but it is pretty mild overall. The game is simple to understand, so should be easily playable by pre-teens on up, although it will probably be better appreciated by the middle school crowd or older.
Other Platforms DS: Played for this review, use of the touchpad is very helpful for some of the real-time combat. PSP: Recently released, not yet evaluated at this time. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "naval, combat, simulation, portable, RPG, strategy" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Steel Horizon |
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