After I was nothing however a small boy, certainly one of my mom’s favorite movies was An Officer and a Gentleman. I personally wasn’t bothered by all of the romance and smoochy nonsense, however the hero for me was the drill Sergeant, Sergeant Foley, brilliantly performed by Lou Gossett Jnr. His foul mouth and the way in which he spoke to the recruits, whipping them into form was an inspiration.
What this rambling introduction is resulting in is that of Full Steel Sergeant from CarloC Video games and PolyCrunch Video games. You see, this guarantees to let me dwell out my fantasies of being a drill teacher, moulding younger males into troopers and so forth and so forth. So, let’s see if it lives as much as my hopes and desires…
First off we’ll take a look at the presentation of the sport, and right here the information is blended. It’s one more retro fashion affair, together with your sergeant and your recruits depicted in-game as tiny piles of pixels. I want I could possibly be kinder, however that’s what I’ve seen – tiny piles of pixels doing issues. The bottom the place we prepare our recruits is pretty easy, with 4 train sections to it, and we are able to change these sections round to swimsuit the actual wants of our recruits. There are a few different screens to say too and after the recruits have graduated, there’s a mission display, that appears like a map that you just fill in, and a battle display, the place our piles of pixels shoot at different piles of enemy pixels. Once more, the graphics are easy. However they work.
The sound is best, with our character, the sergeant, having a pleasant line in insults and working cadences. In actual fact, if you choose him, he’ll really reply you again, which is a pleasant contact. Coaching and gunfire noises are all current and proper too and so all the pieces when it comes to the Full Steel Sergeant audio works.
There’s not a lot when it comes to narrative or story although, and what’s there may be easy – we’re a drill sergeant and each 12 weeks we’re given three new recruits to hone into lean, imply combating machines. Our recruits flip up as out of practice civvies, and we have now to get them to point out us their struggle faces in a really brief time frame. That’s just about it – after you could have educated them, they head off for an precise mission, after which it’s sport over, begin once more. Brief? Undoubtedly. Good? Effectively, that is still to written…
And so we get on to the precise gameplay, the center of the sport. Right here the information is fairly good as Full Steel Sergeant is nearly a roguelite; if our recruits are killed on the mission on the finish of their coaching, we have now to start out once more and attempt to do higher. Every recruit has the potential of having a flaw once they come to us – they are often introverted, lazy, and so forth. Fortunately we all know a option to treatment them of those flaws. In case you’re in any doubt, Full Steel Sergeant does inform you easy methods to treatment the character flaws, and it’s all the time finished by drilling. Lazy folks want power coaching, as an illustration, and if a recruit is frightened of water, we have to get them doing laps within the pool. Curing a recruit of his flaw provides Status, which is the in-game forex for purchasing new train gear and for upgrading the present stuff, so it’s properly price doing.
When drilling the recruits, you must regulate what is going on, principally as they’re delicate little flowers. There are two stats to look at over – stamina and stress – making an attempt to maintain one excessive whereas guaranteeing the opposite stays low. Are you able to guess which manner spherical?
Every train included in Full Steel Sergeant will take stamina away and add to the stress stage. After which there are two different choices if issues are going badly in your recruits – you possibly can sit them within the guardhouse, which is able to recharge their batteries, or you can also make them polish a cannon, which has the identical impact, however to a lesser diploma. Sometimes an inspection will happen to ensure your recruits are nonetheless in good condition, and further status might be earned on these visits.
Spending the status can be fairly an vital a part of the sport – we are able to purchase new train yards within the Workplace, and these might be swapped every week to allow us to provide properly rounded troopers. There may be additionally the chance to spend status on coming into competitions towards rival bases, the place recruits will compete in working, swimming, boxing and even capturing towards different recruits. These are usually not occasions which you could affect – you simply want to ensure your troops are educated within the related areas to make them aggressive. These areas come within the type of Energy, Stamina, Melee and Taking pictures, with totally different workout routines able to growing the stats of your troop. If you’re actually fortunate, one train can improve two stats, such because the NoMans-Land gear which you could purchase. The working monitor is one other good train for the squad, nevertheless it makes use of up all of the weekly train factors you get – two per recruit.
As soon as the 12 weeks are up, the troops graduate and are despatched on a mission. This can be a 5 stage affair, with every seeing your troops going via enemy territory to an goal, overcoming obstacles on the way in which. These might be firefights with enemy troopers, encounters with various things (comparable to minefields or villages) and all of the whereas, the provides your troops carry are depleting. As soon as they’ve reached the target, you possibly can then select to return or proceed with the mission. As soon as the mission is completed (all 5 phases) that’s sport over, and you must begin once more from scratch. Ought to your troops all perish (which is fully potential as my guys appeared to search out themselves in a minefield and had been blown to items!), then once more, you begin once more.
There’s little question that Full Steel Sergeant is an attention-grabbing sport, however its large disadvantage is in its size. It doesn’t take lengthy to determine what that you must do to get your guys mission prepared, and as soon as they’ve achieved their aims, that’s it. There is no such thing as a New Recreation + and little replayability – simply begin once more. Extra finish sport content material can be very welcome, nonetheless, for the comparatively low asking worth, there may be enjoyable available right here.
