Some seeds shouldn’t be planted
Look, I loved the 360 era of video games, I mean we had some bangers like the multiple Splinter Cell games, Ninja Gaiden 2, DmC and many more. I long for that time to come back around and with some recent releases like Steller Blade give me hope. But every now and then we get a game that is trying to aspire to the heights of the some of the few I mentioned above but just don’t quite get there; enter Steel Seed a title that is billed as ‘stealth-action’ by the Italian studio “Storm in a Teacup” who also made the critically acclaimed Close to the Sun.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
Steel Seed is a competent game, but it feels like a game that is patched together Frankenstein from some of the best of the PS3/360 era. For starters the story feels weird, and I never really cared about protagonist Zoe. The game begins with her on an operating table, suffering from some mysterious illness. You can see her father working on something, the cut scene ends, and she wakes up thousands of years into a dystopian, cyberpunk type world. But instead of still being a girl, she is instead in a suit of armor that isn’t too dissimilar from one of Mortal Kombat’s many, many, many, many ninja characters. She even has a long braid that swings around as Zoe moves throughout the world. Zoe is given the quest to start a mysterious program that will help to repopulate the Earth. She is quickly sent on a fetch quest to pick up shards of her father’s program from around the world by a character who looks like Cinder from Killer Instinct.
In what I assume is the studios’ effort to keep Zoe from being compared to Alloy; Zoe is paired with a little robot friend named Koby. Their relationship grows over the course of the game but because Koby *speaks* like R2-D2, I still felt like Zoe was talking to herself a lot of the time, just like Alloy. Luckily though Koby is useful in combat as well as helping with the many platforming puzzles that players will come across. This is where the ‘mishmash’ begins as the platforming in Steel Seed feels like its pulled from Uncharted; players will scale a wall from ‘slightly shiny silver’ hand holds to another, I know, but I guess at least they aren’t yellow, right?
Let’s talk about the ‘stealth-action’ in this game, neither of which is revolutionary or really good. Stealth is extremely basic, instead of hiding in a bush like in Assassin’s Creed players can disappear in weird purple mist that is coming up out of the floor in various places. Luring an enemy over will have Zoe do a basic stab attack every. single. time. Stealth also feels not needed; I didn’t really get anything extra from using stealth as opposed to just coming in; weird lightsaber type sword swinging. But even that’s not good, combat has the tried-and-true “light and heavy attack, dodge” system of gameplay. The windup for heavy attacks makes them all bt useless and the enemies are suuuuper spongey and fights are boring instead of thrilling. Oh, and because it’s the cool thing to do the game has the old “campfire” type upgrade and save system, and yes enemies to respawn when you refill Zoe’s health at these points. I can’t express how much I hate this timeline.
The more I played of Steel Seed the more I felt like that old saying where the kid asks for McDonalds and their mom says they have that at home. Yea, well Steel Seed is like the Stellar Blade we have at home. While the game itself is competent, its greatest sin for me is that it just wasn’t very fun. This seed didn’t bring forth the crop I thought it would, and I suggest just skipping this one.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
