Fighting Steel by Eric "Snacko" Marlow
	Game Play The first thing you are confronted with when playing Fighting Steel is the game's interface. What initially starts as confusion and trepidation turns into a genuine appreciation in the designer's ability to give the player a wealth of control over the combat action. Daunting interface aside, after a couple of battles you quickly learn how to maneuver between the 2D battle overview screen and the 3D combat screen. The sim also gives you a wide variety of action cam settings, which can automatically pan you to the action, or if you wish, stay on one particular view. I'm glad that the designers gave me the ability to configure the view settings - several times during heated battles I would be automatically switched to a view that I did not want. Luckily I could quickly turn off this auto camera. Battle victory once inside an engagement is determined by the ability of the commander to maneuver his fleet into an optimal firing position, usually with all guns pointed at the enemy. While there is much to concentrate on to optimize your crew's ability to put steel on target, I began to wish I had more control over my ability to accurately delivery ordnance. When I interviewed Joel Billings, the Producer of Fighting Steel last year's E3 in Atlanta, I learned that the design specifications did not include a first-person gunnery/torpedo station or radar position. While I can't fully criticize a feature that wasn't included, I can say (pun intended) that they missed the boat on not giving us more human control over the guns and torpedoes. I don't wish to diminish the fact that maneuvering the firing line is simply a matter of "crossing the T", because it is a bit more than that. But I quickly found myself making my moves and just sitting back and watching the action. Allowing me to better control my accuracy via gunnery stations, torpedo solutions, and radar identification would have kept me more engaged. Click to continue		I should also mention that game play is selectable in terms of allowing the player to determine how much of the battle he wishes to control. Each engagement is usually made up of 2 or more divisions (each division may be made up of one or more ships). As control of multiple divisions can be pretty brutal at times, you have the option of controlling only one division at a time; the Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over control of the other divisions. While I'm glad SSI incorporated this option, I usually found myself playing standard mode because I found it difficult to coordinate any attack with the AI divisions. Although each execution of a single player historic or fantasy scenario results in a numerical score, the game does not save these numbers on a "high score" board. I would have liked the ability to compare my success to my own previous performances by examining one score versus another. Campaign high scores are saved for later comparison. Graphics Support and Quality 640x480 screen resolution is supported via the Direct 3D API, and this is the only graphics mode supported. Generally I found the graphics to be acceptable, even with the lower standard resolution. The objects and environment are not really up to the standards that have been set by recently released sims, but they are of a decent quality. There are some spectacular explosion sequences, and shell geysers that appear in the water close to the ship reward shell hits. Shell misses are not displayed - only shells that "straddle" are displayed. This is probably a frame rate issue, but could have incorporated selectable settings for those of us with more powerful machines. While weather and visibility are modeled in terms of AI, they are only modestly represented with graphical atmospheric effects. Skies become gray and the sea state changes slightly, but there is no graphical representation of rain, fog, snow, or heavy seas. One disappointment was that there was no visible torpedo splashes when a hit was scored. Again, this could have been a frame rate issue, but since torpedoes don't hit that often, I would think that they could have been worked into the game in some capacity. Go to Page Four: Sound and Realism
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