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Review: IronStorm
18 years ago
General
This is an older title. I'd heard about it when it came out, heard people talking about how it sounded like it could be such an awesome game. The potential was certainly there: the setting is phenomenal. It's 1964. World War 1 never ended. The world's economy is centered around the continuation of this war and the development of new weapons for it. These weapons are a combination of modern-ish firearms with obviously turn-of-the-century look and feel to them. Mounted machine guns have water-cooled barrels as was frequently seen at the time. Your assault rifle you carry around is big and bulky, looking as if its own barrel is perhaps water-cooled. This sounds like it could be a really, really neat setting, though perhaps appealing to a fairly small niche. I had big hopes about an immersive game experience that really made me feel like I was there.
The only thing I feel now is a gaping, festering hollow where my soul used to be. A mere hour, perhaps two, tops, is all that was required to destroy all happiness in my life and drain any hope for the future. I know, now, that mankind has developed it's most terrible weapon, and that weapon is IronStorm.
The game's biggest flaw is it's engine, and graphics. As I said before, it's an older game, but the graphics look atrocious even when you take that into consideration. The game came out in the early 2000s, and it looks horrible. Unreal looked better. There were lots of PS1 first-person shooters that looked better than this game. Hell, in some ways, Duke Nukem 3D and it's sprite-based character objects looks better than this game.
Colors and textures are bland and dull; while there's some interesting elements in some of the levels (such as bombed-out buildings), the fact remains that everywhere you look is the same grey and brown uninspired textures.
While we're talking about bland and dull, let's go into gameplay. Imagine Wolfenstein3D. Yeah, that one, the predecessor to DOOM. Now imagine that you've removed all of the side-rooms so that all you're faced with is an endless maze of hallways, and the Germans are, instead, Russians. BINGO! You've got IronStorm's level layout in a nutshell. True, there are the rare moments where you get to leave your trench network (to face almost-certain death at the hands of enemy machineguns, but more on that later), but these are few and far between. The level design pretty much consists of running around in circles in the trenches until you eventually end up where you're supposed to be. Did you take the wrong way? You'll soon find out when a bomb lands in the trench, or you step into a puddle, or walk into a cloud of gas. Any of these instances, you die. The most infuriating of these was walking into a puddle and dying. A puddle. You're apparently some well-trained soldiercommando or something, and you drown in a half-foot of water. This is like GTA3 all over again.
Let's get to the real horrible part of this game, the engine itself. Oh my god. I've met some horrible game engines before, be they shoddy AI, rampant cheating, ridiculous physics, or frustrating controls. None of my previous experiences even come close to the agitation I've experienced in playing this game. My dear sweet Jesus Christ Son of God, this is atrocious. Allow me to detail the problems I have.
First and foremost is the physics. If you get shot, you inexplicably skid back about a foot. Now, I'm not one of them big-city lawyers or anything, but I'm pretty sure that a (on average) 60-grain bullet moving at *maybe* 2000 feet per second is not going to hit your body and make you float back like you're a tissue paper in the fan. Worse still, this effect applies itself even when you're laying down - and sometimes in real absurd ways. I was laying on a slope, where my right side was higher than my left, and I was shot from the front. For no reason, my body began to slide a bit to the left. A few more bullets came. Just before dying, I slid further left.
Damage is another irksome aspect of the game. As is my norm, I started the game for the first run-through on the easiest difficulty (this gives me time to get accustomed to the feel of the game without being overwhelmed). Even on this so-called easy difficulty, I was being one-shotted from across the map by snipers I had no reason to suspect were even there. This, of course, means I have to load the last save, and carefully approach the position, and see if I can find the sniper. Usually, this takes about three attempts.
Other infuriating aspects are machine gun ambushes. Round a corner and - HEY! There's three mounted machine guns there, ready to turn my body into hamburger. Well, time to load the last save, once again. I have no problems with games putting obstacles in your way; it wouldn't be a challenge and wouldn't be worth playing if it didn't make you work for it. But a good game isn't built on obstacles that you only know about after they've killed you, forcing you to play through again to it, armed this time with the foreknowledge that something will be there. That isn't fun. It's infuriating. It's fun when you're confronted with a "OH MY SHIT!" moment and have to dive for protection and then figure out a way around it. Turning a corner and being cut in half by machine gun fire instantly is not entertaining.
I have, however, discovered one nearly-foolproof tactic in the game. I believe it is the only tactic that the game has. That tactic is called laying down. If you lay down and crawl through the map, you're much less likely to take damage from enemy fire, you won't inexplicably float backwards nearly as much, and the enemy has a harder time hitting you. In one of the few times it makes you leave your rat-maze of a trench network, this means that you can (read: have to) lay down with a sniper rifle and take out the oncoming zerg rush this way, or else you will be chopped into dogmeat faster than you can say "load last save."
This isn't to say that laying down will save you. No, you will still die. You will die a lot, and you will be tapping autosave every 20 seconds as you grind your teeth and wish terrible, horrible things upon the programmers. My current favorite is imagining them crushed to death beneath a pile of unsold copies of IronStorm.
But at least you get to shoot people, and like every good FPS out there, you can use mounted weapons. This is one of my favorite parts of a good FPS, giving you an opportunity (and perhaps more importantly, a good reason) to use a mounted weapon. Playing with the heavy hardware is very gratifying. Sure, sneaking around and popping people with your silenced broomhandle mauser can be entertaining, but the chance to mow down hordes of Russians with a mounted machine gun... how can you go wrong? That has to be fun, right?
The game designers managed to find a way to suck the joy out of this event, as well. You sneak up behind a guard and plug him, and his machine gun nest is now unmanned and looking out over a sea of unsuspecting troops. What mayhem might we wreak now? None, until you've pressed the "use" key no fewer than five times.
You heard me right: five. Allow me to explain why.
1. You put away your gun.
2. You equip your "fists".
3. You step behind the mounted gun
4. You grab the gun.
5. You are now able to actually fire this gun.
And then after you're done firing the gun, you have to equip your old gun -- to do this, you press the corresponding key on your keyboard, then press the "fire" button to confirm that you want to use that. Apparently, the game really enjoyed that last gun you were using, and offers you that last chance to verify that you want to put it away in favor of something else. Nor does the game recognize the mouse wheel, so fast-switching by rolling the wheel won't work.
In short, I hate my life and I am going to go run into the nearest burning building. I no longer fear hell, for I've been there. It's name is IronStorm, and it is an abomination. Don't buy this game. Don't steal this game. Not even as a joke. Not even to verify the veracity of my claims. Don't give this to someone else as a joke, or even as revenge. Nobody has done anything bad enough to deserve this. Give it half an hour with the game and you'll be looking for something solid against which to beat your skull until your brains come out.
Trust me, it isn't worth it.
The only thing I feel now is a gaping, festering hollow where my soul used to be. A mere hour, perhaps two, tops, is all that was required to destroy all happiness in my life and drain any hope for the future. I know, now, that mankind has developed it's most terrible weapon, and that weapon is IronStorm.
The game's biggest flaw is it's engine, and graphics. As I said before, it's an older game, but the graphics look atrocious even when you take that into consideration. The game came out in the early 2000s, and it looks horrible. Unreal looked better. There were lots of PS1 first-person shooters that looked better than this game. Hell, in some ways, Duke Nukem 3D and it's sprite-based character objects looks better than this game.
Colors and textures are bland and dull; while there's some interesting elements in some of the levels (such as bombed-out buildings), the fact remains that everywhere you look is the same grey and brown uninspired textures.
While we're talking about bland and dull, let's go into gameplay. Imagine Wolfenstein3D. Yeah, that one, the predecessor to DOOM. Now imagine that you've removed all of the side-rooms so that all you're faced with is an endless maze of hallways, and the Germans are, instead, Russians. BINGO! You've got IronStorm's level layout in a nutshell. True, there are the rare moments where you get to leave your trench network (to face almost-certain death at the hands of enemy machineguns, but more on that later), but these are few and far between. The level design pretty much consists of running around in circles in the trenches until you eventually end up where you're supposed to be. Did you take the wrong way? You'll soon find out when a bomb lands in the trench, or you step into a puddle, or walk into a cloud of gas. Any of these instances, you die. The most infuriating of these was walking into a puddle and dying. A puddle. You're apparently some well-trained soldiercommando or something, and you drown in a half-foot of water. This is like GTA3 all over again.
Let's get to the real horrible part of this game, the engine itself. Oh my god. I've met some horrible game engines before, be they shoddy AI, rampant cheating, ridiculous physics, or frustrating controls. None of my previous experiences even come close to the agitation I've experienced in playing this game. My dear sweet Jesus Christ Son of God, this is atrocious. Allow me to detail the problems I have.
First and foremost is the physics. If you get shot, you inexplicably skid back about a foot. Now, I'm not one of them big-city lawyers or anything, but I'm pretty sure that a (on average) 60-grain bullet moving at *maybe* 2000 feet per second is not going to hit your body and make you float back like you're a tissue paper in the fan. Worse still, this effect applies itself even when you're laying down - and sometimes in real absurd ways. I was laying on a slope, where my right side was higher than my left, and I was shot from the front. For no reason, my body began to slide a bit to the left. A few more bullets came. Just before dying, I slid further left.
Damage is another irksome aspect of the game. As is my norm, I started the game for the first run-through on the easiest difficulty (this gives me time to get accustomed to the feel of the game without being overwhelmed). Even on this so-called easy difficulty, I was being one-shotted from across the map by snipers I had no reason to suspect were even there. This, of course, means I have to load the last save, and carefully approach the position, and see if I can find the sniper. Usually, this takes about three attempts.
Other infuriating aspects are machine gun ambushes. Round a corner and - HEY! There's three mounted machine guns there, ready to turn my body into hamburger. Well, time to load the last save, once again. I have no problems with games putting obstacles in your way; it wouldn't be a challenge and wouldn't be worth playing if it didn't make you work for it. But a good game isn't built on obstacles that you only know about after they've killed you, forcing you to play through again to it, armed this time with the foreknowledge that something will be there. That isn't fun. It's infuriating. It's fun when you're confronted with a "OH MY SHIT!" moment and have to dive for protection and then figure out a way around it. Turning a corner and being cut in half by machine gun fire instantly is not entertaining.
I have, however, discovered one nearly-foolproof tactic in the game. I believe it is the only tactic that the game has. That tactic is called laying down. If you lay down and crawl through the map, you're much less likely to take damage from enemy fire, you won't inexplicably float backwards nearly as much, and the enemy has a harder time hitting you. In one of the few times it makes you leave your rat-maze of a trench network, this means that you can (read: have to) lay down with a sniper rifle and take out the oncoming zerg rush this way, or else you will be chopped into dogmeat faster than you can say "load last save."
This isn't to say that laying down will save you. No, you will still die. You will die a lot, and you will be tapping autosave every 20 seconds as you grind your teeth and wish terrible, horrible things upon the programmers. My current favorite is imagining them crushed to death beneath a pile of unsold copies of IronStorm.
But at least you get to shoot people, and like every good FPS out there, you can use mounted weapons. This is one of my favorite parts of a good FPS, giving you an opportunity (and perhaps more importantly, a good reason) to use a mounted weapon. Playing with the heavy hardware is very gratifying. Sure, sneaking around and popping people with your silenced broomhandle mauser can be entertaining, but the chance to mow down hordes of Russians with a mounted machine gun... how can you go wrong? That has to be fun, right?
The game designers managed to find a way to suck the joy out of this event, as well. You sneak up behind a guard and plug him, and his machine gun nest is now unmanned and looking out over a sea of unsuspecting troops. What mayhem might we wreak now? None, until you've pressed the "use" key no fewer than five times.
You heard me right: five. Allow me to explain why.
1. You put away your gun.
2. You equip your "fists".
3. You step behind the mounted gun
4. You grab the gun.
5. You are now able to actually fire this gun.
And then after you're done firing the gun, you have to equip your old gun -- to do this, you press the corresponding key on your keyboard, then press the "fire" button to confirm that you want to use that. Apparently, the game really enjoyed that last gun you were using, and offers you that last chance to verify that you want to put it away in favor of something else. Nor does the game recognize the mouse wheel, so fast-switching by rolling the wheel won't work.
In short, I hate my life and I am going to go run into the nearest burning building. I no longer fear hell, for I've been there. It's name is IronStorm, and it is an abomination. Don't buy this game. Don't steal this game. Not even as a joke. Not even to verify the veracity of my claims. Don't give this to someone else as a joke, or even as revenge. Nobody has done anything bad enough to deserve this. Give it half an hour with the game and you'll be looking for something solid against which to beat your skull until your brains come out.
Trust me, it isn't worth it.
