STEEL RATS Review for PlayStation 4

Steel Rats is a racing/platformer by Tate Multimedia. In it, you control a biker gang as they fight off an alien robot invasion. When the game begins, the robots and their origin are surrounded by mystery. As the game progresses, the origin of the robots, why they are there, etc., becomes more apparent.

The game itself appears to play like a 2D racing game, with enemies and platforming elements sprinkled throughout the levels. You can switch between the members of the biker gang at will and each one has their own health bar. When one of the bikers runs out of health, you can no longer select that biker for the remainder of the level—although if you restart the level or play a different level, the wounded bikers will be available again.

All the bikers ride motorcycles equipped with a razor-blade on the first tire which can be used to mow down enemies. The razor-blade is more than just a weapon though. There are certain surfaces in the game that the razor-blade can stick to, allowing for the player to drive up walls and on the ceiling as long as the blade is active. At first, you simply need to hold down the button for the blade and you will get taken to your destination, but in later levels you need to pay attention to the track, as it might require you to steer left or right to avoid gaps in the track—which could spell doom if you are on the wall or the ceiling. Luckily, if you fall to your doom your biker will simply respawn at an earlier point in the level with 1 square of their health missing (although to be fair, the most health I ever saw on any of the bikers was 5 squares, so this is still a big deal).

The bikers themselves play near identical to each other. The only real noticeable differences were the special attack and the dash attack of each of the bikers. The bikers also have different amounts of health and energy.

As you play the game, you can collect junk—the game’s form of currency. You can spend ‘junk’ to either acquire upgrades for your individual bikers—such as increasing the amount of health one of the bikers has—or to buy items that change the appearance of an individual biker or their motorcycle. As the appearance modifiers didn’t help me in any way to get through the level, I usually chose to save up for upgrades. Though in due fairness, I usually had more than enough ‘junk’ to get both the appearance modifiers and the upgrades.

There is also a collectible item hidden in each level, usually in the form of a golden statue of a rat. These items are usually out of the way, and as such, I didn’t find many of them. From what I could tell, collecting these items unlocks some background information about the characters or the setting.

Overall, I enjoyed playing Steel Rats. As such, I think a fair rating for it would be 8/10.

Check Out the Steel Rats Launch Trailer:

Steel Rats can be purchased from the PlayStation Store as the base game at $19.99 or the Deluxe Edition at $23.99, which includes the main game, a PlayStation 4 theme, the soundtrack and five PlayStation avatars. The soundtrack can also be purchased separately for $4.99

Steel Rats can be purchased from Steam and GOG as the base game at $19.99 and the soundtrack is also available separately for $4.99.