Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (3DS) Review

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (3DS) Review

Date Released: 13 March 2015

Date Played: 20 December 2021

Introduction:

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. was a commercial failure that received very mixed reviews when it arrived on store shelves back in 2015.  Developed by Intelligent Systems, the renowned developers of the Fire Emblem and Paper Mario franchises, many people were excited for this release when it was first announced and seemed more than ready for a little tactical shooting action.  Once people got their hands on it, however, the community was greatly divided. Everyone either seemed love it or hate it with not many falling in between.  With lots of 3/10 reviews and lots of 9/10 reviews, this left the overall ranking of the game somewhere in the mediocre range when all averaged together. Without a known franchise tie in or license to bolster its sales, it wasn't long until you saw piles of this game stacked up in the bargain bin for $5.  Even now, 6 years later, this game can be had for around that same price brand new. 

So, is this game a misunderstood masterpiece that was just beyond the grasp of your average casual handheld gamer?  Or, was is a S.T.E.A.M.ing pile of garbage that revealed the hubris of Intelligent Systems and Nintendo?  Let me put it this way, I bought this game brand new for $1 and not only do I not feel like I got my money's worth, I feel like Nintendo OWES me money after playing this mess of a game.

Story:

The premise of this game is so bizarre and unhinged that it's hard to know where to begin. Essentially, Abraham Lincoln faked his own death to escape from the public eye so he could form a secret combat force known as S.T.E.A.M. to, as I quote, "fight the real enemy."  Never mind slavery and its abolishment, a nation divided by war and trying to heal, nor a general powder keg of political differences threatening to cast the re-United States back into turmoil. No, according to this game, none of that was the real problem.  The REAL problem was... ALIENS.  That whole presidency thing was just a temporary cover to create this, "Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace (aka. S.T.E.A.M).  This whole premise is so tasteless and out of touch that I'm almost at a loss for words.  I can't believe that Nintendo took a real historical figure who was literally killed for their beliefs and trying to make humanity a better place by liberating millions of enslaved people and turned them into a caricature for an easy "cool" factor. I can picture the developers in my mind sitting around a conference table and someone says, "We need an American that everyone likes to be the focus of our game."  Someone replied, "What about Abraham Lincoln?"  Then, no thought was given to Lincoln's actual personality or attributes, they slapped a beard and a mole on a generic steampunk character and called it a day. What's next, saying Martin Luther King Jr. faked the whole Civil Rights Movement and his own assassination as giant distraction so he could secretly create a team of fighters to eliminate the bug monsters living below Atlanta, Georgia?  Offensive.

Anyway, Queen Victoria (yes, that Queen Victoria) has had Buckingham Palace invaded by the aliens and Henry Fleming (from Joseph Conrad's the Red Badge of Courage), John Henry, the cast from the Wizard of Oz, and some other randomly selected literary characters that have nothing to do with each other join S.T.E.A.M. to go fight against the alien menace.  It's an incredibly random premise and it really does feel like the developers were just drawing ideas out of a hat. 

I'm sure there are some people out there who really dig this crazy idea for a game, but I find the game's lack of propriety off putting and its general world building (outside of its characters) rather banal and pedestrian.  You can't take a storyline as overused as an alien invasion, inject a bunch of random characters that everyone knows, give them all stereotypical personalities that have nothing to do with the way the actual characters behaved themselves, and call it "original".

Gameplay:

The gameplay is a tactical combat game like the developer's previous Fire Emblem games combined with a 3rd person view like Valkyria Chronicles (which really just makes it a ripoff of Valkyria Chronicles since that was a tactical combat game itself). Your team is put onto a map with an objective (like reach point A, or escort person B, etc.) with a group of enemies between them and their goal.  You able to move around on a grid system and fire your weapons. This is done in 3rd person view with a targeting reticule.  Each action uses "steam" which acts as action points.  Just like all of the games in this style, you try to move into position and outflank your enemy while using your action points wisely to eliminate them.  The different characters have different weapons and abilities that sets them apart and just like always, picking the correct team for the job is essential.  If you conserve enough steam on your turn, it will put that character into overwatch and any enemy that crosses them will get blasted.  Using this technique is an important mechanic and the game feels impossible without utilizing this. It doesn't feel much different than the aforementioned Valkyria Chronicles and comes across more of a bad clone of that game rather than a progression of Intelligent System's other games.

After all of your characters take their turn, the enemy gets to go.  And this is where the game takes a giant nosedive right off the cliff in terms of gameplay.  The game makes you sit through every single enemy action as they slowly happen. You can't fast forward, you can't skip. You can't even see what the enemy is doing unless one of your team members has line of sight on them (which isn't very often).  Much of the time, you'll just be staring at a wall while the computer moves the enemy around somewhere in the distance.  This can take almost two minutes sometimes.  It's absurd, and I've never seen a worse game design choice in my life.  Pretty much half of your playtime is just sitting there waiting on the enemy turn while not knowing what they're doing or where they are.  It's totally pointless for the developers to have included this and it shows a blatant disregard for the gamer's time. These parts are so long and so boring that I almost fell asleep during several battles. Truthfully, it feels like they didn't even playtest this game before releasing it because no on in their right mind would have thought the omission of a fast forward option during these sections was reasonable.

On top of that, there is no in-game map.  You can't see where you're going, you can't see where you are, you don't know where the enemies are located or how many there are remaining, and you can't get a grasp of the overall area that you're supposed to tactically overcome.  It pretty much makes the game unplayable.  Remember how I said that using your overwatch was essential to succeeding in the game?  Well, the enemies have this ability too.  Since there's no map, and no way to know where the enemies are, you'll often walk around a corner and there will just be an enemy there sitting in overwatch who will blast you in the face.  Then, you try to back up and get out of line of sight, and they see you move and blast you again.  Basically, you're constantly walking into traps with no way to know they're there and once you get into those situations, there's rarely away to get out without taking massive damage.  It's extremely frustrating and rage inducing to say the least.

I found a good method for avoiding this was to just go super slowly and rely almost exclusively on your overwatch to carry you through.  Unfortunately, the game pretty much spits out enemy reinforcements from behind you constantly.  So, you're almost always being pincered from two directions which forces you to have to constantly move your squad forward. This of course is not always tactically advantageous and often forces you into the enemies lying in waiting and feels unfair and cheap.  Also, in some levels you'll just start off being surrounded by several enemies from above that can jump down on you, fire at you, and drop grenades on several of your soldiers at once and you have no way of reaching them or targeting them.  You have to push through the hail of bullets and attacks over several turns while taking tons of damage just to get into a position to fire on the enemy.  I understand that this happens in these sorts of games on certain maps and various scenarios.  But, it seems like a common occurrence in this game and makes the battles themselves feel like they weren't well thought out. Rather than clearing out enemies along the way as you push towards your goal, this game feels like enemies constantly pour out from all directions around you while you try to survive long enough to make it to the objective. You'll constantly feel outnumbered, outgunned, and intentionally put into a losing position.  

This game is hard, unforgiving, and it feels unfair a lot of the time.  Even when you line up a shot on the enemy's weak point, often times their standing animation will make them bob out of the way and have your bullet miss.  Imagine you have a section in a game where you have to take out an enemy with a sniper rifle, but the entire time the enemy just keeps swaying back and forth.  You fire your shot right when his head is in the crosshairs, and once the bullet is in the air, he sways out of the way causing you to miss.  Every enemy in the game feels like they do this all of the time. This is just another in a long line of poor design choices.

Personally, even when I felt like had a good handle on the battles and was making good progress, I just wasn't having any fun.  The little bit of enjoyment I was starting to experience was completely quelled by spending half of my time just waiting on the enemy's turn or trying to hunker down and clear out some enemies blocking my way while reinforcement after reinforcement kept appearing from behind me. I finally called it quits when I spent an hour trying to fight my way through a section over and over during several attempts.  I finally got to a spot with some cover, and the game decided to spawn 3 new enemies behind me.  I'd use all of my steam to take them out.  Then, they'd spawn 3 more on the next turn, rinse and repeat.  It was demoralizing. 

The game does give you save points, healing items, and powerful special attacks (that can only be used once per battle) to help you out during a mission.  But, they honestly feel like they were put in there to help make the game more forgiving in terms of difficulty rather than balancing out the scenarios themselves.  Why carefully plan out enemy placement that forces the use of good tactics; when, instead, you can just throw a bunch of overpowered enemies randomly around the map and give the player a bunch of healing items and save points and let them clumsily work their way through it?

Presentation:

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. is an ugly game with a bad art style.  It presents itself in a comic book setting with mostly still frame animation surrounded by panels.  Often, the poorly voice acted characters will give exposition about what they are doing and you'll see an image of them with a sound bubble that says, "wham" or "bang" a la the 1960s Batman TV show.  Ugh.  The cell-shaded graphics, which are normally pretty forgiving, don't work well here and give the blocky and clunky character models and even more unappealing look.  The alien enemies are uninspired and very generic looking and are all too similar to each other.  If they didn't tell you the name of the enemy when you targeted it, I don't think I would have been able to tell the enemies apart whatsoever.  Everything is just a purple scorpion-like insectoid. The lack of enthusiasm for creating interesting enemies to fight on part of the developers is appalling in this game.  

The music is good enough and ranges from some rock tracks to some basic EDM stylings.  It does serve to keep the action up as much as it can, but it's not memorable in any way and fades into the background of the presentation... and your mind far too easily.

As for the voice acting.  It's so very bad and hammed up.  The characters all deliver their lines like they are playing old fashioned comic book characters... because that's what they're are. But, I can only hear John Henry say, "Now, that's a whole lot of ugly." every time he sees an alien before I begin to lose my mind. I know that this is exactly what the developers were going for, but it's not what I want. I'm tired of it. Similar to how the dialog from anime can become a cringeworthy trope, the over confident action hero dialog doesn't fare any better.

Conclusion:

Code Name S.T.E.A.M. is a painfully bad game that loves to waste your time.  It took a fun and engaging gameplay genre and made it boring and tedious.  You spend half your time not doing anything and the other half of your time trying out half-baked strategies because you can't truly plan anything due to the game's lack of a map.  The premise of the game is very cliché and overused with the alien invasion idea.  They tried to spice things up by using what they considered to be whimsical and zany characters, but this only comes off as not only lazy, but actually severely lacking in decorum in the case of Lincoln.  The cell-shaded comic book steampunk aesthetic is so incredibly overused and phoned in that it feels like the art direction of this game was created by a focus group of 9 year old boys trying to act cool.  There is nothing likable or redeemable about this game and the only positive I have to say is that the game is technically functional.  It's didn't crash, and I didn't encounter any bugs (excluding the alien character models) while I was playing.  

I paid $1 for this game, and it was a gigantic ripoff.  

Final Status: Played (couldn't force myself to continue)

Final Score: 3/10 (Painfully bad.)

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

 

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) Review

Date Released: 29 August 2017

Date Played: 18 November 2021

I can't even believe this game was made. I wonder how the meeting was at Nintendo when Ubisoft approached them about using their beloved Mario franchise in a crossover with the Rayman Rabbids franchise to do a turn-based tactical shooting game similar to the Xcom games. I'm surprised Shigeru Miyamoto didn't laugh them out of the room. Nintendo loves to keep most of their Mario game development in house, so handing over their cash cow to Ubisoft seems like a potential disaster. Regardless of how the sales pitch went down, Nintendo greenlighted it and the game actually got made.  Any you know what?  The game is really good and a lot of fun.

Because of their crazy antics and general disregard of decorum the Rabbids have misused a young inventor's newest creation and have accidentally transported themselves to the Mushroom Kingdom.  One of the Rabbids continues to misuse the invention and begins causing havoc everywhere by merging his Rabbid buddies with various objects and characters from the surrounding areas.  Bowser Jr. sees this and decides to kidnap the chaos causing Rabbid and use him for his own evil deeds.

Mario teams up with the usual cast of characters; Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi as well as Rabbid versions of the same characters.  This lively cast then has to set out through 4 worlds to try to save the day. There is very little dialog, but the crazy Rabbids and familiar Mario cast more than make up for any lack of voice acting with their familiar and unique personalities. As Nintendo knows, a lot can be conveyed with a simple twirl and thumbs up.  They are the same characters we know and love and it's very nice to see them in a new and novel situation as well as a different style of game.

The graphics look very... Mario... and are very colorful and bright, just like you would expect.  Playing in handheld mode on the switch lowers the resolution to 720p and locks the framerate to 30fps which is standard, but does slightly detract from the full presentation of the game in docked mode. Still, for gaming on the go you can't complain. Exploring around Peach's castle which serves as a hub area is a lot of fun and there are plenty of secrets to find as well as plenty of humorous and eye catching objects around the scenery.  I appreciated the display on the time travel washing machine that is taken directly from Back to the Future. It's the little touches like this that helps a game stand out. From here you can branch off into each of the four worlds as they become available.  The first is the grassy Ancient Gardens which looks like your standard first area in any 3D Mario game.  After that, you'll be visiting the Sherbet Desert which is a mashup of the standard desert and ice levels you always seem to encounter.  Thirdly, is the Spooky Trails area that brings out the haunted mansion complete with Boos that are another hallmark of the series.  Finally, is the Lava Pit which is exactly like you would expect.  All of these areas are very unique and have a lot of different personality and exploring around them in between the battles is some of the most fun you'll have with the game and serves to give a well needed cool down between the combat portions.  

Of course, magnificent music accompanies you on your journey that range from well know pieces from previous Mario classics to brand new fully orchestrated works that fill in the gaps.  Like you would expect, these are memorable, unbelievably well composed, recorded and mixed expertly, and just add so much to the overall experience that they are basically enmeshed with the Mario franchise by this point. You can't have a Mario game without great music; and this game is no exception.  Even though it borrows heavily from previous games in the series, it presents them (along with the new tracks) in such a deft and mindful manner that it truthfully elevates the game to a new level. On more than one occasion I found myself humming along to the music while I was focused on exploring an area.  This is good thing and shows how well Nintendo understands the importance of a great tune with a catchy hook.

While on the aesthetic side of things, let me discuss the animations of the characters.  All of the standard Mario cast and it's Rabbid counterparts have unique animations and personalities that are manifested by their movements.  Seeing Rabbid Luigi stop, drop, and roll after getting lit on fire is hilarious and so well done.  Rabbid peach being addicted to social media and constantly taking selfies at the worst moments, Mario's jumps and twirls as he lands on an enemy, the way Peach lobs a grenade, and so many other unique touches gives a lot of heart to this game.  I never tired of seeing these and though you can fast forward through a lot of the combat steps to save time, I rarely ever did it because I loved watching the animations of the characters so much.

Ok, so that's a lot about the setting and aesthetics of the game.  What about the gameplay?  I'll come right out and say it.  It's really good and very addictive.  It's broken up into two phases.  Firstly, you explore the areas in the game in typical 3D Mario fashion while solving puzzles, finding hidden areas, taking in the scenery, and collecting coins and other unlockables. As mentioned earlier, these sections are a lot of fun and do a good job of breaking up the repetitiveness of the game. They also add a bit of a platforming feel to the experience and serve as a somewhat familiar component in the game in contrast to the wild departure of the combat phase. I think this was a wise decision and was needed to ground the game and make it feel more like it belonged in the Mario universe. As you are exploring around, you'll come to a battle area where combat will break out.  At this point, the game turns into a grid based tactical strategy game.  You get to chose a team of three characters and you'll take turns moving around the map while taking cover, shooting at your enemies, buffing/debuffing your team, and all the other things you expect in this sort of game. You have special abilities that are on a cooldown that can give you an edge over your foes. Hiding behind different types of cover will give you varying degrees of protection from enemy shots and holding the high ground against your opponents can often give you the advantage you need to win the day. The combat is more simplified than you're normally used to seeing in this sort of game, but it adds some interesting mechanics that give it some remarkable depth. Each character only has a small handful of skills and abilities to aid them. These are all tied to specific characters and there's no real room to change up how a character plays.  If they are designed to be a healer, they're a healer.  If they're designed for a close combat melee character, there's no way to get around that. In addition to these specific skills, all characters whether friend or foe can dash into enemies for a free attack if they are close enough.  They can also bounce of the heads of allies to give them a boost to travel further or to reach a higher elevation. Doing these actions are a huge component of the game and you'll find yourself doing these with every character on pretty much every turn. You'll also have to outmaneuver and flank your enemies to have a chance of winning and having a sound attack plan is essential. As you may have noticed from the peanut gallery of the internet, this game is pretty tough and can be relentless at times.  Often, it feels like you're overwhelmed, or that the enemies are overpowered, or even that you're put in a less than favorable tactical position from the onset.  You'll fail a lot of battles (especially at the beginning) and sometimes you'll have to repeat certain ones several times to succeed.  Luckily, the game takes pity on you and gives you the option to get a heal and health boost before each combat scenario and this can really help and essentially serves as the game's, "easy mode."

In addition to having to master the tactics and mechanics of the game, you'll also need to upgrade each character's skills and weapons.  These can be unlocked overtime and purchased with skill orbs or the coins you collect from exploring the maps and winning battles.  Each character has a different skillset and you'll have to select a good team for Mario to help him best his foes.  I say it like that because Mario (who is pretty much my least favorite character in the game) HAS to be on your team.  So, you're stuck with selecting two other characters to serve along side him.  I find the roles that they have assigned to the different characters to be hilarious.  For example, Peach is a healer (like you would expect), but she also wields a huge shotgun and grenades.  Luigi... is a Sniper.  Rabbid Mario is a chaingun wielding psycho.  It's all very clever and I appreciate what the development team did on this front to inject even more humor into the game. Of course, the bosses are all epic, challenging, and have some really interesting mechanics that evolve over the multiphase battles. They can be quite challenging and you might have to attempt them a couple of times. So, it's really wise for them to have memorable and fun character design so you don't get bored with them or dislike them too much.  Be on the lookout for these bosses because the "Rabbidized" versions of some of your favorite Mario characters make an appearance that is often very delightful.

As you upgrade and unlock more characters... and hone your combat skills, the game does begin to get a little easier.  I found myself smashing through battles with full health and wiping out handfuls of enemies on my first turn towards the last half of the game.  This is in direct opposition to the first half of the game where I was just barely scraping by with only one or two characters barely alive at the end of a battle after failing it previously and having to retry. Knowing that both I and my team were getting better over time was a strong motivator and helped me push through some of those frustrating parts.  I could see someone getting quite irritated with this game and rage quitting.  Sadly, I wish I could tell them to hang in there because it gets better.

As for my final conclusion...

This is a really good and unique game that I would recommend to any fan of turn based strategy or tactical games.  I'm not sure that I would necessarily recommend it to a Mario fan unless they were actively trying to find something different from what they are used to.  It has all of the characters, scenery, music, and personality from a Mario game, but that's where it ends.  The gameplay is just so wildly different that it might be a deterrent for the platforming fans.  Personally, I like the game a good deal but didn't really fall in love with it.  I'm not sure if it was the difficult combat at the beginning of the game or what, but it took me three and a half months to beat this game.  I would play it for a few hours and have a pretty good time with it, but when I turned off my console, I didn't really have a craving to come back to it and sort of had to force myself to load up the game and play it.  Yes, the combat can be a little draconian at times and man would see that as a negative, but I enjoyed having to overcome those challenges and found it refreshing for a game that looks so "kid friendly."  The only negatives I have about the game is that I wish you had more control over your party selection.  I didn't like being forced to use Mario in my party and wouldn't have used him at all if it wasn't required. Also, the co-op mode is locked behind single player completion. Meaning that if you want to play an area in co-op with a friend, you have to finish that area solo first. I wish there had been a separate solo and co-op campaign so you could experience the game with a friend for the first time together rather than your friend having to tag along on an area you've already completed before.  Also, Mario games are typically pretty friendly for children; and while this game doesn't have anything offensive about it, the difficulty may be off putting to some younger kids that want to play. My daughter watched me play and really wanted to join in but couldn't get the hang of how the game works. Other than that, the game was fun and I look forward to seeing what the development team will do with the next entry in the series.

Final Status: Beaten (90% completion)

Final Score: 8/10 (Great)