Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor

It's not just the tanks that are from a bygone era. The VT crews have stepped straight from a WW2 drama - exaggerated pickings of Americana that only could have been created in Japan. They're an important part of Steel Battalion's make-up, too; accompanying you in the claustrophobic confines of the tank will be three teammates, all serving different purposes.

There's a gunman who provides you with added firepower and a communications man who feeds you with intel. There'll be a selection to choose from, each with their own attributes, and they'll be persistent throughout the campaign. Death is permanent; lose one and they'll be gone forever from your campaign.

Keeping them alive is a task in itself, for if there's anything that Steel Batallion's learned in its long absence, it's how to orchestrate maddening chaos on the battlefield. Like Call of Duty, the war here is loud and pervasive; throughout the course of one skirmish the screen's one red and frenzied blur as shell after shell pounds into the VT.

Panic prevails, and the game's canny enough to acknowledge that - even if its response is a little eccentric. When the din becomes too hellish to bear, crewmembers can make a suicidal bolt for the escape hatch, and - through the magic of Kinect - you can pull them back in and slap some sense into them.

If that's all a bit much - and for me it certainly was, as I couldn't help but laugh out loud upon seeing this - rest assured that underneath Steel Battalion's motion control experimentation there are traditional and very hardcore shooter mechanics. The traditional controller's leant on heavily, with the twin sticks being used first-person-shooter-style, while the triggers are given over to shooting.

It's more traditional in other ways too; in spite of its novel aesthetic, Steel Battalion can feel wearily generic. The one level we see asks little more than you kill everyone in sight, and depressingly, it's a retelling of the Normandy beach landing transposed to a New York that's under siege; two of gaming's greatest clichés conveniently rolled into one overstated mess. A strange one, then. The swipes and exaggerated gestures that Kinect has introduced are no replacement for the lure of black plastic and countless buttons - which, in itself, sounds like a familiar refrain when it comes to motion control gaming.

But there's an invention and enthusiasm to how Steel Battalion embraces Kinect, and as a core game for Microsoft's controller it certainly ticks the right boxes. It may not go on to be as fondly remembered as its predecessor, but in its own way Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is just as novel - and it's certainly just as eccentric.