Steel Seed

Steel Seed plunges you into a storyline overflowing with promise. The first few sections start introducing the core mechanics and there is a steady drip not only of new abilities unlocked throughout the game’s first act and into the second but also details about who you are and where you have found yourself resurrected into being.

You take the reins as Zoe—an augmented human on a quest to find her father. By your side from the go is Koby: an AI drone with a myriad of abilities of its own that can be used for observation, navigation, and occasionally a potshot or two in combat.

There is plenty of mystery from the go, and while some of the finer details about Zoe are bit fuzzed at first, the world around you is a wonder to behold and more than makes up for any missing spaces in the character.

That’s probably the first really stand out aspect of this game: the world it presents. It is large and impressive. Around most corners are jaw dropping panoramas sometimes showing the next platforms to tackle and, at other times, opening up the scale and depth of the world. It is gorgeous to behold, a metal future of bots and AIs but with a gritty finish as the years Zoe spent sleeping away have worn the shiny finish down.

Level design follows a familiar pattern where traversal sections break up outposts—essentially checkpoints full of enemies that have to be taken down by stealth or by sword before unlocking some door to move forward to the next traversal. The world is spectacular, but in-game the history of it goes a bit unexplained.

You get an understanding that there was a cataclysm that threatened to end humanity but it really glosses over much detail there. That's fine because the focus really is on Zoe, her journey, and unlocking some secrets along the way. You meander through, learning more, collecting clues, until a giant robot mech warrior Titan comes bounding into frame, usually trying to squish Zoe as she frantically power slides through collapsing rubble to escape to the next level.

Combat is decent. Most of the outposts will be largely handled by carefully whittling down the enemies one at a time. Follow their marching patterns to isolate a mark with a takedown from the shadows and then move on to the next. What I most enjoyed was simply feeling that I didn't need to be perfect. In many games with these types of sections, one alert puts you at such a disadvantage that you might as well just smash that reload from checkpoint and try again.

But in Steel Seed, if I made a mistake and was spotted out of cover, I could usually transition into combat to close the outpost. If it was too early into a room that might not be the case, but those checkpoints are always right at the start of the outpost, you know the drill. The combat mechanics are fine and I could always handle a handful of adversaries. There are a few attacks in Zoe’s toolbox and using them unlock even better ones.

Which is another thing I really appreciated: the level up system is very much proficiency based. It’s not just a collect XP and choose a new trick. You have to actually successfully use the last trick a few times, say, five power strikes or 10 stealth kills, before you can unlock the next trick in the book. It reinforces a path to mastery of what you do have as well as encourages you not to just crutch on the acquired skills too heavily.

The levels also progress mostly seamlessly from one to the next. Save spot checkpoints where you can implement those upgrades are well spaced but there becomes this flow to the maps that leans into the feeling that this world is realized and these sectors stitch together even though you obviously load into and out of one to another. 

Once you’re into act two or so that encouragement to keep exploring the abilities and options becomes most relevant because the game does start to grind down a bit into its formula. Traverse some jumping puzzles with a lot of ledge grabbing, sneak into an outpost and stealth takedown a room of enemies, slap around the last few with some combat, repeat a few times until the level’s end when the Titan pops up again and rush through a running section to escape the danger as the world goes to bits around you...then load into the next level. Climb, hide, race, repeat—every level plays out on similar if not the same loops. 

It’s all pretty good, but it’s not groundbreaking. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve played this game before. This one had a very pretty skin on it, but the traversal mechanics and stealth to combat sections are in many games. I kept coming around to the idea that I was basically playing android Uncharted. That’s good company to be sure. The Uncharted series is one of the best on any generation of PlayStation consoles, and everything about Steel Seed is presented at least competently but most often done well. So what’s the problem?

Well, unfortunately for all the strength the game flexes in the first two acts, I can’t help but report it all falls apart in the game's final act. No spoilers, but the game weaves together a solid narrative and you can see where the threads could be going and are rewarded with tracing their paths through the early levels, but it just doesn't stick the landing. Which is such a shame because for all the competency the game presents, I found myself about halfway through realizing the narrative was going to make it or break it for me.

The gameplay is good, but nothing groundbreaking. I've played this style game before and enjoyed it and here I am enjoying it again. I was really into the plot as the layers were unpeeled and was of a mind that a thrilling finish could actually be the thing that makes this one stand out above its peers; but instead it fell flat on the final hurdles and ended up below other entries into this genre...even if only slightly so.

And it's not just narratively, but gameplay-wise things go awry as well in those final moments. Of course you get a big final battle to close the game, but just before that is the final chase to lead you into the arena. It's still following the climb, hide, race, repeat flow until the very end. But in the first part of that last race the game tries to dial things up to 11 but is let down by wonky collision mechanics. It's one of the weaker points of the game but until now mostly stays out of the way.

Yeah, occasionally I might fail to land a ledge or grapple a hold I was sure my character had cleared, but they were incidents few and far between enough that I never really minded. But this last section is running so fast and the ledges spaced so far that the wonky mechanic becomes the story, as I have to restart from my checkpoint again and again, falling over and over to jumps I feel I should have landed.

Then there is a second part to this race that mixes things up a bit but throws you into a completely new control scheme which is unintuitive and unpracticed. Mostly I'm looking at you here, y-axis. I am inverted Y until I die, but in that last race section I don't get the option, so I basically spend most of it un-immersed and fighting my own controller rather than enjoying the journey. Bleh.  

And that's what I'm left with I'm afraid. It's not a bad game. It's actually quite good. But it doesn't exactly stand out—which is fine. The disappointing bit is that it crescendos to a promise of much more than it ends up delivering. The plotline and narrative build off cool ideas and the game mechanics and play progress really well, until all of the sudden they don't down the home stretch. I don't want to paint a picture that Steel Seed is a bad game, because it's not. But it sets up a lofty trajectory and then falls flat. It's the sports team that is so good in the early season they are leading the league table but have a disastrous close to the season to end up just outside the playoffs. The kind of thing where if you take the season, or in this case the game, as a whole you would rightly be proud of the accomplishment. If you offered the fans in preseason a peek at the final table they would probably have been happy with the placement. But when you play it out and start so strong only to peter out late you end up lamenting that the finish missed the mark of something really special that the start had you dreaming of what might have been.