Steel Rats

My first instinct when I loaded up Steel Rats was pure curiosity: who thought it was a good idea to strap circular saw blades to a motorcycle, throw it into a Trials-style physics engine, and then dump a robot apocalypse on top? Tate Multimedia, apparently, and the result is one of the stranger action-platformers you'll find on PC. Set in a steampunk-flavoured alternate 1940s, you control four members of a biker gang, James, Lisa, Randall, and Toshi, each with their own weapons and special abilities, as they tear through the five districts of Coastal City fighting off an invasion of Junkbots. The wheelsaw mechanic is the real star: your front wheel is a spinning blade that chews through obstacles, alters your trajectory mid-air, and just generally feels incredible when it clicks. Chase sequences where you're leaping across exploding blimps or outrunning a giant swinging anchor are genuinely thrilling setpieces. The 2.5D lane-switching system is what sets Steel Rats apart from a straight Trials clone. Rather than being locked to one plane, you push up or down to shift between foreground and background lanes, think of it like riding in parallel tracks through the world. It opens up a surprising amount of route variety and lets levels feel maze-like in their better moments. The catch is that the controls take real time to internalize: managing lane switches, a spin deflect move, character-specific specials like James's ground shockwave or Randy's harpoon chain, firing weapons, and keeping your bike upright under physics pressure is a lot to juggle all at once. The camera also struggles at high speed, sudden drops and environmental hazards sneak up on you in ways that feel cheap rather than challenging. Stick with a gamepad here; keyboard is genuinely not recommended and the physics demand analog input. The four characters sound more distinct on paper than they play in practice. Switching between them on the fly is a cool idea, but their unique abilities rarely demand you think carefully about who you deploy. The RPG-lite upgrade system has the same problem: junk currency, earned by destroying enemies and environment, flows in so freely that you can unlock almost every perk before the campaign is half done, which kills any sense of meaningful progression. The enemy roster, Spinners, Hatchers, Hovers, and their bigger cousins, looks cool but plays repetitively, and the final boss drew specific complaints even from fans of the game. Story is thin, voice acting is patchy, and there is zero multiplayer of any kind, which is a genuine missed opportunity for a game about a four-person biker crew. With that said, Steel Rats runs around six to seven hours for a single playthrough, and per-level bonus objectives (speed runs, no-damage clears, enemy-type challenges) give completionists a reason to go back. The art direction is legitimately good, dark, industrial, colour-coded by character, and visually readable even during hectic combat. The soundtrack, composed by Arkadiusz Reikowski, fits the chaos well. If you are a Trials or Urban Trial fan looking for something that pushes that formula in a weird new direction, this scratches a very specific itch. If you want split-screen couch fun or a breezy pick-up-and-play arcade game, look elsewhere, this one needs patience before it rewards you, and it will never be the party game the premise implies.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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