World of Tanks creators Wargaming is getting into the mech-plaguing business with Steel Hunters – a recent, free-to-play multiplayer shooter powered by the Unreal Engine where Transformers-style behemoths fight for control of an energy source called “Starfall” on a breakable, post-apocalyptic map . It was just announced at Wrasslin’ Geoff’s Winter Hootenanny, also known as the Game Awards, and the game’s 10-day PC test is currently underway. Here’s the trailer.
Before the show, I attended a presentation for Steel Hunters, so I can offer some breathtakingly mediocre observations. To avoid the obvious question: why not call it World Of Mechs? Wargaming didn’t address this during the conversation, but I think part of the answer is yes already a game called World Of Mechsat least for VR. However, it seems that Wargaming also wants to keep some distance between games, and in practice Steel Hunters is not just World Of Tanks with some Michael Bay DLC.
Starfall Harvest’s core mode is a mix of hero shooter, battle royale, and extraction shooter gameplay in which six two-player teams fight to capture towers on maps of towns and villages full of destructible equipment items that level up during battle. In addition to enemy hunters, each map has fleets of flying drones that can be farmed for upgrade materials and consumables.
There are two main types of upgrade materials. Energy is your overall experience that allows you to level up: there are five levels, with a recent skill unlocked at level three. Meanwhile, upgrade your cores, boost your shield, damage and health pools. There’s the familiar MOBA-style question of whether to target other players early or take over an area of the map and focus on farming and upgrades.
In addition to the race for upgrades, you have many paths to victory. Capturing towers activates buffs such as radar range or stat boosts, as well as looting capabilities, so it’s worth stocking up on one or two of these while chasing drones. However, you can instead focus on killing other hunters and collecting their tokens to unlock the most powerful consumable of all – the Colossus set. This turns you into a steel-armed Olympian, raining down hellfire on other mechs.
In both cases, you’ll have to worry about the endgame, where teams will have to capture and hold a single extraction point or eliminate all remaining teams. It looks like Colossus will be there additional– useful at this point, so even if you’re not aiming for Colossification, you’ll want to sabotage teams that have an advantage in player kills.
As for the characters, they cover a range of classes and playstyles seen in other shooters. Razorside is a boringly bipedal, all-in-one “GI Joe” type of PC designed to appeal to gamers fresh from games in which you play as some kind of non-metal body-based robot, a “human being” if you will. Ursus is a bear equipped with guided missile launchers, while Fenris is an agile wolf robot that can teleport with the blink of an eye, as in Dishonored. This is probably bad news for the Prophet, a gesticulating drone summoner and artillery platform that can’t take many hits.
Trenchwalker is a combat medic with a leech that heals allies, while Weaver is – surprise, surprise – a buzzing arachnid that acts a bit like Overwatch’s Bastion and fires machine gun salvos that force it to move slowly. Finally, there is Heartbreaker – the symbolic girl, at least when it comes to the December tests. She’s a femme fatale sniper, because of course she is. More Hunters will be added each season: I bet they’ll add a ninja, a robot dragon, and a woman with a submachine gun on roller skates.
You’ll level up each round, but you can also customize the hunter’s basic equipment to suit your methods. For example, you can modify Fenris’s blink to heal you or reload your weapon. In terms of monetization, it is a season pass format, similar to World of Tanks. Everything in each season will be free – paints, emotes, recent hunters, skins – as long as you’re willing to go out of your way to get it. Alternatively, you can jump to skip the leveling.
I can’t say I’m thrilled with what I saw in Steel Hunters. It’s a tangle of science fiction genres and archetypes that already seems to be based mainly on associations with World Of Tanks. It seems solidly made, though, and I’m kind of charmed by Wargaming’s absurd insistence on having its own term for co-op teamwork – “Duo Symbiosis.”
The presenter spent about four minutes explaining this term, and I’m still not entirely sure if this is an actual in-game system or just advertising jargon meaning “choose a loadout that complements your partner’s loadout.” If you decide to join the December test, let me know if there’s more to it, please? Speaking of which: the test includes three maps – two set in the US, one in the UK – seven hunters and the basic Starfall Harvest mode.
You can read more about the Steel Hunters on the website Couple or by official website. They will release it in beta next year.
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