Shattered Steel

Shattered Steel is an action game released in 1996 by BioWare for MS-DOS, and later ported to Mac OS by now-defunct Logicware. It is notable for being, according to BioWare, the first mech game with deformable terrain effects.

Story
Shattered Steel takes place in a desolate future where humanity is on the verge of extinction. Save your species as you engage in fast-paced mechanized combat in the single-player campaign, or take on your friends in the multi-player arena. The game takes place over 5 separate worlds (planets), each planet has about 20 missions.

The enemy in the game is a group of aliens who are in some way or another organic, mechanical or a combination of both. Examples of this are the Aspis, a spider-like enemy with an organic look and the Wasp, a very mechanical looking air vehicle. As the story unfolds, more is discovered about who controls the aliens, what their purposes are, and how to destroy them once and for all.

Gameplay
The game itself mimics the style of the Mechwarrior videogame series, featuring mechanized combat in bipedal machines called "Planet Runners". Unlike Mechwarrior, the Runners do not generally take humanoid shapes - only two of them, the Retro and Shiva, have a distinct human shape and neither of them have arms. Some of the Runners are based around animals, such as the Raptor, with a very overbearing appearance and "Chicken walker" style legs, with claw-like feet. The enemies are somewhat more varied but generally center around animals such as spiders, scorpions and the praying mantis.

The game shares more similarities with Mechwarrior, in the fact all of the Runners have a specific weight limitation, and can have their weapons, shield generator and engines interchanged and removed based around this limit. Each of the runners has a primary weapon mount, and one or more secondary weapon mounts, along with a shield and generator bay. Primary weapons are mounted on the head of the Runner and most feature twin primary mounts for a pair of guns. Secondary mounts are singular and weapons can be grouped, single, or alternately fired independent of the primary guns.

There are specific sets of primary and secondary weapons, and they are not interchangeable. A set of three laser and three bullet weapons, with two special energy weapons round out the primary weapons. Secondary weapons range from dumb fire rockets, guided missiles and energy cannons to howitzers, mortar cannons and - very late in the game - nuclear missiles.

Energy weapons have a maximum ammo amount (up to 200 in some cases) and recharge when below this number. Bullet weapons however, do not recharge, nor are mid-mission reloads possible. Weapons can sometimes be picked up off the battlefield, at the expense of dropping the currently selected secondary (or current primary) weapon. One advantage of this is the ability to pick up a weapon too heavy for the Runner to normally use, at the cost of drastically reduced speed.

Missions vary from assaults, infiltrations, recon to defending bases or convoy escorts. Combat is fairly straightforward, with the ability to tilt and pivot the Runners "head" (and sometimes the entire torso) to target enemies not directly ahead of the player. This is especially useful when attempting to take down rather frequent encounters with airborne units.

The two main features are locational damage and deformable terrain. Locational damage applies to all enemy units and buildings, allowing the player to target legs to quickly destroy or disable enemies, to destroying the head, which in most cases is not actually fatal, but has practical or comedy purposes. The basic bipedal walker enemy without its head has no weapons, but it will continue to walk around - blind - bumping into the player or buildings. Deformable terrain is primarily a visual pleasure, with little practical use. However, persistence or clever thinking can reward the player with a tactical advantage. shooting at the edge of a hillside can create a "notch" to fire down onto or up at targets. The biggest deformation possible is the nuclear missile. Accompanied by a white flash, it will not only obliterate almost anything within its wide explosion radius, it also creates a large crater and sends out a shock wave along the ground, using the terrain as a moving "wall". Not only does this serve to trap anyone surviving the blast inside a deep, burning crater, but it can be used as a mountain-destroying device, or to rip a chunk out of just about anything that stands in the player's way. Any terrain deformation can be seen on the games 3D, real-time map screen.

In total there are 7 Planet Runners available to the player: Gnat, Stormguard, Invader, Warthog, Raptor, Retro, and Shiva. Each class of Runner also has its own onboard computer, with its own voice overs and in some cases, a different view on things. The heavy runners speak in first person ("I have damage to my hull"), where the lighter runners are more formal ("Warning: Damage to hull").

The player is assisted by yet another voiced computer situated in its starship in orbit around the planet. The AINIC(Artificial Intelligence Network Interface Coupler) Mark 3, as it calls itself, provides all mission summaries, briefings and mid-mission updates with a full voiced backing, and is presented as a self-aware computer entity.

The game also includes multiplayer and a mission editor. Multiplayer can support up to 16 players, and a "single player anarchy" mode also includes options for co-op play, custom missions, bots, and playing single player missions with multiple humans, either with the aliens or against them.

Interactive Preview
Before the game release, a playable "Interactive Preview" was sold in stores. This preview came with a cloudy-red "Interactive Preview" CD-Rom (DOS version) in a standard jewel case, a red manual with, on its front, a small Interplay advertisement "6$ OFF mail-in rebate..." and a promotional "coming this fall" Shattered Steel advertising the full version at $15.95US, and a "Get Shattered" back cover with the game plot and screenshots. This demo was not rated at its release (Rating Pending "RP"). Some Interactive Preview discs were defective, rendering working copies very scarce for collectors and fans.