Controller is highly recommended for this game! I can tell you because, for the first few hours I had to play it without one.. and it was really hard to get the hang of it.

Now I have a controller and it is much more easy to play, however using a controller is a brand new thing for me. I never believed that I will buy one for a PC. I have used controller for old console machines about 20 years ago. :D

To be honest, I really like the game's atmosphere and the idea to drive motorbikes in an action platformer game.

But the thing I hate is to start over the whole stage when I run out of living characters.

-3 for controls (Sometimes the motorcycles are behave really abnormal in this game. The ultimate skills were hard for me to use effectively, so I didn't use them at all and still managed to make the game completed)

-1 for the checkpoint system


My rating: 6/10

90% off, go and buy it! :)

Thought this looked great and really wanted to enjoy it, but the controls are astonishingly poor. They totally destroyed any fun I could have had with this, to the extent I very quickly found it unbearable.

Even if you can get over the controls, the game also features an arcade-style "lives" system which feels totally unnecessary and out of place. Far from adding anything to the game, it feels pointless and arbitrary, and it's enormously frustrating whenever you are forced to start back at the beginning again.

One noteworthy thing that stands out to me about virtually every single one of the positive reviews is that they have *barely touched* the game. So evidently, even the people who can get over all of the issues still don't think it's good enough to actually be worth playing...

Overall, a big disappointment, and not remotely fun.

I decided to take a gamble since I'm not one to buy sidescrollers, and seeing how the game price is less than the amount I'd spend on a pizza I figured why not.
Its a lovely game, feels very polished and smooth with some very cool mechanics.

My only complaint with it is how stages just... end. You're riding through the level and then you hit an invisible rubber wall; that's the end of the level. You uncerimoniously press a button and its over.

Steel Rats has nice enough graphics, meh story and mediocre voice acting. It also has terrible controls, bad physics and it's laggy as heck. It's really too bad that the devs didn't get it right, it could have been a really good game. Not recommended

Steel Rats, a game about bikers using Their cruisers to fight off evil robots in a future-retro diesel-punk setting: My God, if ever there was a game made just for Me! It's a shame the game is so bland.

The game is advertised as “Arcade action”, but what You get I can only describe as “motorcycle parkour with a bunch of mooks in Your way”.
Most of the game's content is navigating the ramps, jumps, and platforms that the levels are comprised of. You can even skip most of the fighting by just driving through! There are about twenty permanent upgrades You can unlock and buy for the characters, most of which You'll never notice. The buying mechanic is meaningless here, as earning cash is stupid easy. At no point did I have to make the “Gee, if I buy this, I can't afford that” choice, nor did I ever feel the need to try harder at the game to earn more cash.

At no point do You feel like You're in danger. No “Crap I better conserve My health”, or “I better clear these weak bad guys before the big baddie gets here”. No using specific attacks or that favorite combo of Yours. No “Oh God not this guy get it away from Me!”. No needing a plan for certain areas or bosses. Of course, there ARE NO bosses, so no worries there either.
The small robots can be killed just by running into them, and literally everything else can be taken out by holding (A) and driving into them. That's it. No, really, just hold (A) and push into the baddies. Sure, You 'could' use one of the five thousand different attacks, but You don't really have to.
Health isn't much of an issue when You can instantly switch between four characters with their own health bars, multiple health rechargers, tons of checkpoints on most stages, and the usual auto-save between every level.
Now, don't misunderstand Me, I'm NOT a difficulty nerd, I like games that give Me a fighting chance, which is why it's alarming for even Me to criticize a game as not providing a worthy challenge.

All characters handle the same and are equally effective in all situations, no need to “save” one character for a particular task, or fail at something because You used the wrong character. None of the characters feel unique. Why bother having a “teenage genius”, “Racer”, “Tough leader” and a “Wild/punk dude” if there's nothing to make them stand out? Toshi should have the cool energy attacks and gimmick items, Lisa should be fast and the first choice for maneuvering and dodging, James should be a tanky hard-hitter ramming the piss out of His foes, and Randal could be the balanced one. While there are differences to the character's moves, it's not really enough to matter. Compare this to a classic like “Streets of Rage”, where choosing Axel, Adam, or Blaze was a big deal.

Controls: Like most modern beat'em-ups, Steel Rats insists on using every button on a standard x-input controller, twice over. The result is a clumsy, obtuse control system with far more function than You need, with functions that are redundant, unused, and in some cases entirely forgotten by the player. There is a manual jump (Y) that You will seldom use, until You get stuck on some specific gimmick and go “Oh, yeah, I've got a jump button don't I”... There's an entire attack system I forgot about early on, and went the entire game without using; The right-bumper “charge attack”. The fact that I never felt underpowered, or that I was missing something, shows that this, along with most of the game's attacks add nothing to the experience.
I could spent this entire review on the poor control system. You cannot move freely about the ground, as the fore and backgrounds are divided into “lanes”. Your character will automatically settle into one lane or another, and beyond that there are a couple of areas where there are extreme far/near lanes that can only be traversed while holding the stick in those directions, or else You fall off.
Instead of using the left stick (or d-pad) for movement, the game has an utterly awful vehicle-esc control system; Right trigger is forward throttle, Left trigger for both brakes and reverse, left-right on the stick pitches Your bike up-down, up-down on the stick veers You in those directions. Turning around requires the B button, but if You hold it a hair to long, You go into a spin. Tap it, You do a 180. Press it while holding up or down and You U-turn. (X) is the “unique” attack system for each character, all You'll realistically do with it is mash it on occasion. R3 is Your character select, instead of the d-pad.
There's guns You get sporadically through the game that get their own button (left bumper), while (A) does about a dozen things, leaving some parts of the controller simple, and others overloaded with functions. Like all modern beat'em-ups, game play eventually devolves into sticking to a couple of comfy attacks and ignoring all of the filler moves, save for the occasional gimmick.

Graphics: Average. The entire game takes place at night, and everything is the typical modern dirty/gritty brown garbage. Enemies are little piles of junk walking around, so no real style to speak of. I enjoy Americana and ride a cruiser Myself, so I enjoyed the bikes, blimps, and overall aesthetic, just wish there were more to look at than the murky soup this game has to offer.

Sound: bland. Sound effects are good, get's the idea across. Really enjoyed the sounds on the bike engines. Music is forgettable background filler, when the game bothers to have music at all. No epic boss fight music, no toe-tapping tunes to fit the scene. Hell, there wasn't even any music during the final fight. You'd think the devs would have conjured up some rockabilly, or something with a bit of energy to it. Even the theme/menu song is forgettable, bland, annoying droning on.
As usual, the devs opted for voiced dialog, which is pretty good, accept for the VA for “Lisa”. My God, I haven't heard such blocky, clumsy, emotionless delivery since Megaman 8 and X4!

Performance: Good, but with a few bugs. There's a stage where You are being chased vertically through an underground shaft by the one and only boss robot. There were some nasty bugs here, like the throttle not working and Your bike moving at a crawl, Your character “death wobbling” back and forth on the grind rails until they fall off, the physics engine taking a dump and not letting You jump/fling Yourself through the air to the next rail. Some levels with destructible platforms failed to reload if You died after they fell, leaving You stuck.

Style: Poor. Again, brown and gray, dark and gritty. Set some areas in the daytime or in a well lit area. Give us some color. Give Us some music. An entire game of dark smears with neon projectiles is unremarkable.

In closing, Steel Rats is a game that can't figure out what it want's to be, and suffers for it. If Tate Multimedia stuck to the beat-em-up genre, They could have simplified the controls; Use the left stick for all movement, forget about the lanes, u-turns and such, just have “attack 1, Attack 2, Jump, Special” action buttons. Forget the unlocked power ups and go for in-level ones instead. Make every enemy worth fighting. Give us some major bosses to fight instead of the same goons over and over. Make us worry about Our health. Make character choice matter. Give Us some music to listen to and set the mood. Etc.
Or, if Tate Multimedia wanted to stick with the parkour elements; Again streamline the controls, make the levels longer, add a time constraint, speed up the overall pace of the levels. Maybe have Us constantly moving, with the real difficulty being surviving the environment.

Sadly, Tate multimedia came up with a really cool idea, and made it dull and awkward. I'm biased, being an American motorcyclist Myself, so here's hoping Tate Multimedia makes “Steel Rats 2”, and corrects the flaws of the first.

So far, loving it! LOVING IT! A fun platformer is always refreshing. The controls can take a bit to get used to but its fun, fast, its got a great look and solid graphics. This is one of those little gems that pop up out of nowhere. Get it at any price

Can't believe a game that's supposed to be a high speed motorcycle chase platformer action game bored me, but yeah it was boring. The jumping feels weird, having to saw obstacles doesn't work right, and the voice acting is so boring that I just didn't care about the story at all & didn't pull me in (The player casually yelling "Ow!" as he fell into a *literal pit of fire* just had me dying in laughter).

I wouldn't recommend it even for free (which it currently is)

Controller is highly recommended for this game! I can tell you because, for the first few hours I had to play it without one.. and it was really hard to get the hang of it and with a control it is a bit difficult to play this game but still worth it is addictive this game.

6.7/10

- DIFFICULTY -

🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
🔲 Normal
☑️ Hard
🔲 "Dark Souls"

- GRAPHICS -

🔲 "MS Paint"
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Graphics don't matter in this game
🔲 Good
☑️ Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece

- MUSIC -

🔲 Bad
🔲 Not special
☑️ Good
🔲 Beautiful

- STORY -

🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Like playing "Temple Runners" for the story
☑️ It's there for the people who want it
🔲 Well written
🔲 Epic story

- PRICE -

🔲 Free
🔲 Underpriced
🔲 Perfect price
🔲 Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
☑️ Complete waste of money

- REQUIREMENTS -

☑️ You can run it on a microwave
🔲 Average
🔲 High end
🔲 "NASA" computer

- LENGTH -

🔲 Very short (0 - 3 hours)
☑️ Short (3 - 15 hours)
🔲 Average (15 - 50 hours)
🔲 Long (50 - 90 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (90 - 110 hours)
🔲 No ending

- FUN -

🔲 I'd rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
☑️ Repetitive
🔲 Actually pretty amusing
🔲 Ride of your life

- REPLAYABILITY -

🔲 It's a one - time experience
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months / years
🔲 Definitely
☑️ Infinitely replayable

- WORTH BUYING -
🔲 It's Free
☑️ No
🔲 Wait for sale
🔲 Yes

I can take physics bugs that lead to instant deaths, I can take a few crashes to desktop, I can take horrible design decisions in something that's otherwise fun.
But I can't take it all at once coupled with a timed challenge in the last mission that's in this version most probably undoable.

During some parts when everything worked out to make a fun rollercoaster kind of game I thought about recommending this heavily, now I regret ever installing it.