Z: Steel Soldiers´ predecessor Z featured fast and furious battling and territory capture-related play, but was beaten to release by Command and Conquer. Since rival Emperor: Battle for Dune looks back to deep sci-fi for inspiration, Z: Steel Soldiers has clear ground in a crowded real-time strategy market where a new element is always welcome.
Digitised comic-style pictures convey the storyline in cut-scenes, with added split-screen and a mixture of cod American and British accents. The story starts with a peace agreement on the table when two stray junior units bring down what looks like an enemy ship, dragging you back to a centuries-old conflict.
Territory is captured via stationary flag posts and this facilitates unit movement, especially as the enemy only appears on sight. There are few peaceful moments in the game--you´re given the briefing and you´ve got to keep your finances up by wiping out the enemy and capturing ground instead of by C&C-style resource management. The problems are more familiar, with sluggish and sometimes unintelligent robots, although since the construction robots repair the warrior units, they are of course deliberately slower at times, forcing you to group them up. This can be mastered, but the camera takes longer--this 3-D system still doesn´t beat Ground Control or Earth 2150 for the flexibility of views.
Features
* Completely 3D environment, boasting 30 missions within six worlds.
* 30 different unit types, including land, sea and air.
* 20 different types of buildings and structures.
* Different map sectors yield different resource amounts and also vary in strategic superiority
* Intuitive point and click control system
* Digital Interactive Music Engine (DIME)
* 20 multiplayer maps allow up to eight players to challenge each other via LAN or Internet connection.
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Eon
06/2001
Strategy
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