Steel Rats is a quite impressive 2.5D motorbike combat game with exciting stunts involved. It was already available for Windows on Steam – however, recently it has been made available for Linux and Mac as well.
In case you didn’t know, you can easily install Steam on Ubuntu or other distributions and enable Steam Play feature to run some Windows games on Linux.
So, in this article, we shall take a look at what the game is all about and if it is a good purchase for you.
This game is neither free nor open source. We have covered it here because the game developers made an effort to port it to Linux.
Story Overview
You belong to a biker gang – “Steel Rats” – who stepped up to protect their city from alien robots invasion. The alien robots aren’t just any tiny toys that you can easily defeat but with deadly weapons and abilities.
The games features the setting as an alternative version of 1940’s USA – with the retro theme in place. You have to use your bike as the ultimate weapon to go against waves of alien robot and boss fights as well.
You will encounter 4 different characters with unique abilities to switch from after progressing through a couple of rounds.
You will start playing as “Toshi” and unlock other characters as you progress. Toshi is a genius and will be using a drone as his gadget to fight the alien robots. James – is the leader with the hammer attack as his special ability. Lisa would be the one utilizing fire to burn the junk robots. And, Randall will have his harpoon ready to destroy aerial robots with ease.
Gameplay
Honestly, I am not a fan of 2.5 D (or 2D games). But, games like Unravel will be the exception – which is still not available for Linux, such a shame – EA.
In this case, I did end up enjoying “Steel Rats” as one of the few 2D games I play.
There is really no rocket science for this game – you just have to get good with the controls. No matter whether you use a controller or a keyboard, it is definitely challenging to get comfortable with the controls.
You do not need to plan ahead in order to save your health or nitro boost because you will always have it when needed while also having checkpoints to resume your progress.
You just need to keep the right pace and the perfect jump while hitting every enemy to get the best score in the leader boards. Once you do that, the game ends up being an easy and fun experience.
If you’re curious about the gameplay, we recommend watching this video:
Performance & Visuals
The graphics or visuals do matter in a game. Even though the minimum system requirements is not something to worry about, you should be good with a processor similar to or better than Intel Core 2 Duo coupled with 4 Gigs of RAM at least and a dedicated GPU ( GeForce GT 630 / Radeon HD 7570).
I tried it on my system with i5-7400 coupled with 8 Gigs of RAM and a GTX 1050 graphics card on board. With the highest settings, the game worked smooth and looked visually good as well. Of course, we will avoid talking about the frames I got – because anything above 25-30 FPS for this kind of game is perfectly fine.
However, I did encounter multiple crashes – so had to restart the game. Maybe the Nvidia driver was at fault? Maybe the fact that I’m using Elementary OS?
I’m not so sure why I had issues – but just a heads up for you. Once the game launches successfully without a crash, it works well without any hiccups.
Final Verdict
While this may not be the most challenging game you’ve come across but it surely is a fun experience. Along with a good gameplay and visuals – the background theme music of the game is also very good.
The music actually sets up the mood of a gamer while playing this – so thought of pointing this out as well.
Depending on your region – you will find this game listed on Steam for either 19.99 USD or 529 INR.
Is it worth it? Yes, if you want a exciting and fun motorbike-action game in a 2.5D experience. No, if you want an extremely challenging 2D game in your library.
What do you think about the game? Let us know in the comments below.
