Around these parts there is no higher praise than “double-A”. It may sometimes be a reflection on the budget, but never on the skill and craft and imagination of the developers. A great double-A game is often a quirky affair built around immediate pleasures and often delivered with a twist.
Steelrising
- Developer: Spiders
- Publisher: Nacon, Bigben Interactive
- Platform: Played on Xbox
- Availability: Out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox
One of the things I’ve only realised recently is how double-As like to find a groove to settle in en-masse. For a while this was “third-person shooter with a gimmick”, so you got Fracture and its terrain deformation, or Red Faction with all those walls coming down. Then we had open-worlds, whether you were a Saint or in a UFO, and endless cover shooters, with stuff like – well, there were a lot of cover shooters indeed.
I am pretty sure that in a previous era Steelrising would have been a cover shooter. That sounds mean and I absolutely don’t intend it that way. What I mean is it’s a Soulslike today in part at least because Soulslikes are the perfect contemporary style for double-A development. You get a framework that is recognisable and satisfying on which to build out your specific double-A charms. I hadn’t noticed until I suddenly looked around how many double-As are opting for the souls approach.
In the case of Steelrising those specific double-A charms come down to the setting a lot of the time, which offers an automaton spin on the French Revolution that sees you heading for the barricades to defeat the ruling classes and smack around all kinds of brass and bronze horrors. Its lovely, off-beat stuff, from the fact that you meet Marie Antoinette before the credits have really faded, down to the fact that you play as a sort of balletic china doll, teetering along on spindly legs, but with twin swords ensuring you’re capable of unleashing proper horror on anyone you meet.
I will be honest: a surprising amount of the early fun comes from seeing how the familiar From Software systems are repurposed – what counts for a bonfire here, and what you’re collecting instead of souls. Over time, though, that all faded. Steelrising became its own thing, offering its own delights.