{"id":5567,"date":"2025-04-22T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=5567"},"modified":"2025-04-24T18:20:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T18:20:31","slug":"steel-seed-review-assassins-creed-meets-halo-on-a-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/steel-seed-review-assassins-creed-meets-halo-on-a-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Steel Seed review \u2013 Assassin\u2019s Creed meets Halo on a budget"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\"Steel\t<\/div>
Steel Seed – it’s amazing how good indie games can look now (ESDigital Games)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new double-A indie game tries to blend elements from two of gaming\u2019s most successful franchises, in a unique new sci-fi adventure of its own.<\/p>\n

These days triple-A game development budgets regularly stray into the hundreds of millions, which means anything less than a massive hit can be enough to send studios into bankruptcy. For publishers, there\u2019s an increasing sense that the future of games may not be a headlong rush towards blockbuster hits at any cost. A less stressful approach may be to make games that don\u2019t have to sell like Call Of Duty<\/a> just to break even.<\/p>\n

It turns out you can make perfectly entertaining games that don’t take 150 hours to play, work perfectly fine without hiring Idris Elba<\/a> as a voice actor, and for which you don\u2019t have to spend multiple man-years in a motion capture studio. It\u2019s not that everything needs to be a pixel art cosy farming sim, but with a more modest vision you can still create great entertainment without having to bet your future on every release.<\/p>\n

Steel Seed is part of this new wave of mid-budget games. While it may not spend the kind of money CD Projekt does on making a new Witcher title<\/a>, it\u2019s certainly not short of ambition, its twin inspirations being Halo and Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/a>. Set in a post-eco disaster future, where every human\u2019s consciousness has been uploaded into an industrial grade AI, you\u2019re Zoe, a cyborg woman tasked with rebooting our species.<\/p>\n

Zoe\u2019s dad was the scientist that came up with the idea and, along with repopulating humans, you\u2019re also trying to bring him back, as he uploaded himself along with everyone else. To do that you need to make your way through a succession of huge, robotic landscapes that look like a cross between Halo and the high-tech Cauldrons from Horizon Zero Dawn.<\/p>\n

The sense of scale is fantastic, with vast, ancient machinery stretching above you, and in every direction as far as the eye can see, dwarfing your cyborg warrior in every way. Your job, in these gigantic metal landscapes, is to work your way through rooms full of alert robot guards, in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who\u2019s spent time with Assassin\u2019s Creed.<\/p>\n

This means using stealth and cover to pick your way towards patrolling bots, before silently creeping up behind them and stabbing them with your miniature lightsaber. If you mess that process up and get spotted you\u2019ll raise the alarm, which rapidly sees you swarmed by robo guards. As in Assassin\u2019s Creed, you can sometimes fight your way out of those situations, but sticking to the shadows is always your best bet.<\/p>\n

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