Shattered Steel
| Shattered Steel | |
|---|---|
Shattered Steel box art
|
|
| Developer(s) | BioWare |
| Publisher(s) | Interplay |
| Producer(s) |
Greg Zeschuk (BioWare) Feargus Urquhart (Interplay) |
| Designer(s) | John Winski Patrick Winski |
| Composer(s) | Brian Luzietti Mark Morgan |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS Mac OS |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Mech simulator |
| Mode(s) |
Single-player Multiplayer |
Shattered Steel is a mech simulation game released in 1996 by BioWare for MS-DOS, and later ported to Mac OS by now-defunct Logicware. It is notable for the deformable terrain effects, and for being BioWare's first developed game.
Shattered Steel takes place in a desolate future where humanity is on the verge of extinction. The single-player campaign takes place over 5 separate worlds (planets), each planet has about 20 missions.
The enemy in the game is a group of aliens who are in some way or another organic, mechanical or a combination of both. Examples of this are the Aspis, a spider-like enemy with an organic look and the Wasp, a very mechanical looking air vehicle. As the story unfolds, more is discovered about who controls the aliens, what their purposes are, and how to destroy them once and for all.
The gameplay is similar in style to the MechWarrior video game series, featuring mechanized combat in bipedal machines called "Planet Runners". Runners do not generally take humanoid shapes - only two of them, the Retro and Shiva, have a distinct human shape and neither of them have arms. Some of the Runners are based around animals, such as the Raptor, with a very overbearing appearance and "Chicken walker" style legs, with claw-like feet. The enemies are somewhat more varied but generally center around animals such as spiders, scorpions and the praying mantis.
All of the Runners have a specific weight limitation, and can have their weapons, shield generator and engines interchanged and removed based around this limit. Each of the runners has a primary weapon mount, and one or more secondary weapon mounts, along with a shield and generator bay. Primary weapons are mounted on the head of the Runner and most feature twin primary mounts for a pair of guns. Secondary mounts are singular and weapons can be grouped, single, or alternately fired independent of the primary guns.
There are specific sets of primary and secondary weapons, and they are not interchangeable. A set of three laser and three bullet weapons, with two special energy weapons round out the primary weapons. Secondary weapons range from dumb fire rockets, guided missiles and energy cannons to howitzers, mortar cannons and - very late in the game - nuclear missiles.
...
Wikipedia