Steel Seed could have been very good. While that opening sentence more or less gives the game away regarding my opinion, it’s the only really concrete praise I can give it. It’s not at all bad – in fact some of it is pretty decent, but it had the potential to be much more.
It follows Zoe, who wakes up in a cyborg body in the distant future having slept through something of a machine apocalypse orchestrated by her own father. Now lost in the kind of ridiculously complex facility that could only exist in a video game, her only ally is Koby, a floating AI drone that accompanies her on her attempts to find the Truth, whatever the truth may be.
The set-up is kind of staid, stalling right out of the gate as soon as Zoe starts talking in quips. There’s no transition into anything, really; she wakes up and is able to stealth around and hold her own against the killer robots who stalk the facility, all the while vocalising every thought that shuts into her brain. She meets a golden entity early on who teaches her how to use special pods to improve her abilities, and sends her on her way. Trouble is there’s no real sense that she’s doing anything specific other than going forward.
It’s a very video game-y world. There are no paths anywhere; you have to climb, slide, swing or jump everywhere. Enemies are just there, apparently programmed to kill anything that moves despite there being nothing in the facility but them, and they respawn when you die just because. Ideally you should be moving stealthily about, using blue holographic grass to conceal yourself (seriously, this is the solution to their being vast open spaces with no cover), but so often the inconsistent AI will spot you from half a mile away and round a corner, and then they’ll all just engage you at once. Even then, if you can hide yourself you can get in a quick contextual stealth kill as they pass you, but I’m not sure this isn’t a bug rather than the intended mechanic.
When you do engage in combat, Zoe comes apart like a loaf of bread in a tumble dryer, and the controls aren’t responsive enough to handle more than a couple of enemies at once. You have plenty of heals on cool downs, but you can die in just a few hits so it’s best to evade as much as you can. Combat is as straightforward as it comes, with a heavy attack, a light attack, and a dodge as standard. What mixes it up is Koby’s ability to shoot enemies (he even hits them sometimes) and Zoe’s knack for hacking. You’ll pick up a skill fairly early on that lets you hack enemies and make them fight for you for a while. It’s presented like some kind of innovation, but in practice it often makes fights feel more awkward.
Where Steel Seed does come alive a little is in the exploration. While it doesn’t really present anything new or fresh, it can be fairly engaging to cross large rooms without being seen, or make your way up the face of some giant mechanism. Climbing points are heavily signposted, but with a swing, double jump, and wall-run, movement is pretty smooth. Now and then you’ll be faced with a set-piece that sees you running from or towards something, which is always quite fun, and early on a 2D sequence that sees you ducking and dodging to avoid a distant sniper is pretty impressive when juxtaposed with the rest of the game.
Aesthetically, Steel Seed is a little hit and miss. On one hand some of the larger open areas are impressive in scale, even if it is mostly down to illusory skyboxes, but the Neon-lit darkness begins to wear on the eyes after a while. Again, it’s not doing anything wrong, but it’s a look borrowed wholesale from literally dozens of other games and never feels like its own entity.
While there are moments in Steel Seed where it feels quite enjoyable, the overall package is pretty lacklustre. It fails to ever really get going, and the constant chatter from Zoe detracts from the world rather than adds to it. Moments where you take control of Koby directly to navigate tunnels and shoot switches break up the pace of walking, sneaking and fighting, but again, this is just stuff you’ve done before elsewhere, too many times to count. It’s an inoffensive adventure and it doesn’t outstay its welcome, but Steel Seed is a fairly forgettable experience throughout.
