>> Shane: Steel Harbinger.
Developed by Mindscape, the game is a 3D, eight-directional, sci-fi shooter...
Released for the PlayStation in 1996.
>> Adam: This was a huge year in gaming!
We had wonderfully realized three dimensional worlds thanks to the fresh Nintendo 64.
We also saw the launch of classic sci-fi shooters like Duke Nukem 3D and Quake.
Games that pushed their genres and new tech forward in great ways!
>> Shane: That's right. And then... There was Steel Harbinger.
[in-game sound effects]
>> Shane: They can’t all be winners.
>> Adam: The game takes place in war-torn North America in 2069.
>> Shane: Many lives are lost... Stupidly.
>> Adam: Unbeknownst to anyone, an alien species attacks!
They rain death and destruction through specialized pods that assimilate any creature nearby.
>> Shane: The aliens seem to be assimilating on a budget.
A tight, tight, budget.
>> Adam: Much of Steel Harbinger's story is told through cutscenes.
They're an interesting mix of live action, CG and... awful.
>> Shane: Here we see the science lab, where the scientists are doing science!
You can tell they're doing science because they have bubbly science liquid in science glass.
>> Adam: Turns out, the lab has managed to contain an unsprouted alien pod.
>> Shane: That’s right. Get nice and close.
>> Adam: The inactive pod suddenly comes to life! Attacking the main scientist’s daughter...
But before she can be assimilated he...
>> Shane: [booming voice] Uses the axe of science!
>> Adam: Ah yes, the ever convenient Science Axe.
Kill it with slicy physics!
>> Shane: After this harrowing event the daughter is transformed into a half alien, half human hybrid...
Muppet?!
[water tank sounds]
Her hair is made of the scrubbies from a car wash.
>> Adam: Her obese eyebrows make her look like she’s in a constant state of surprise.
>> Shane: If I had to make someone look like an alien I don’t think I would've drawn all over their face with a sharpie...
But here we are.
>> Adam: The bad makeup and costumes don’t stop here though...
Outside the lab, every soldier looks like they’re decked out in paintball gear.
>> Shane: To no one's surprise, they’re extremely ineffective at fending off the aliens.
>> Adam: Jimmy, let’s see your war face!
[in-game sound effects]
Oh... Oh Jimmy...
>> Shane: The humanity! Death... Destruction...
Bad CG... And er... Vomit?!
And that folks, is what happens when you eat a pizza pocket fresh from the microwave.
>> Adam: The lab is destroyed.
>> Shane: But now the Steel Harbinger is free.
>> Adam: Harbinger of what?
>> Shane: Bad Robocop impressions, clearly.
>> Adam: Immediately after this scene we’re thrown right into the gameplay. And... oh boy...
>> Shane: There is a lot to take in here folks. So bear with us as we try to explain everything that is wrong.
>> Adam: As we stated, this is a multi-directional third person shooter.
>> Shane: But it’s like no other shooter that we have ever played.
>> Adam: Firstly, though the game uses polygonal 3D assets, we can only see from one perspective.
We can move the camera back and pull the camera in, but can't...
And I stress this...
Can't turn the camera at all! Why is this a problem?
>> Shane: Because unless you’re walking straight forward...
You can't see where you are going in every other direction!
>> Adam: Also, you can’t see anything that is coming at you, from every other direction.
>> Shane: This combined with poor controls makes it a chore to traverse the stages.
And that’s before we even get into how bad it is to simply shoot at things.
>> Adam: You’ve got very poor control on the direction of where you’re firing.
And even if you happen to be looking at an enemy head on, your bullets sometimes spread out and miss.
Sure, you’ve got a lot of weapons to pick from that are slightly different by a touch...
But no weapon feels more powerful than another. Besides one.
>> Shane: [Canadian accent] The Canadian disco ball of death, eh?
>> Adam: Made by Canadians on the Moon during war time...
No joke, this is canon!
It’s the most powerful weapon in the game, the only interesting weapon in the game...
And you‘ll only get four shots in your entire playthrough!
>> Shane: Besides the magic rainbow ball, you’ll waste pounds of ammunition trying desperately to fend off incoming attackers.
All the other weapons just feel hollow and weak!
>> Adam: A steady stream of ever present enemies is constantly going to be spawning and tracking you down.
>> Shane: Some might be easier to kill than others but they all hurt you. Badly.
You’ll lose health so fast you won’t even have time to react.
>> Adam: Remember how we said the camera was a problem?
Well because you can only see in one direction you’ll be pelted with bullets, projectiles...
And other harmful things long before you even see the enemy on your screen.
>> Shane: Among all this chaos you’ll need to avoid shooting humans.
You’re told to save them, but more often than not you’ll accidentally eliminate them.
>> Adam: The innocent bystanders you’ll lay waste to is incalculable.
You won’t mean to do it, but the game will always let you know when it happens.
[in-game voice repeating Human Killed]
>> Adam: Do you get docked points for this unwilling massacre?
>> Shane: Nope! You don’t even get anything for saving people.
But, believe it or not, there is a perk to killing humans.
>> Adam: You can eat their bodies!
>> Shane: Bleh!
>> Adam: You see, that’s one of the few ways to get your health back.
You actually, and we’re being serious here, eat the remains of humans and aliens alike.
>> Shane: That’s clearly the hero the world needs!
The woman sluggishly roaming the battlefield, chewing on your neighbors shin.
>> Adam: It doesn’t even need to be flesh! It could be metal bits and pieces. The Harbinger eats!
And the sloppy, wet, smacking sounds of her chowing down never get old... Never...
>> Shane: So when you think alien enemies, you’re probably envisioning little grey men and stuff right?
Well you’re not really getting that here.
>> Adam: What you do get, is a bizarre roster of baddies.
>> Shane: Robotic bullet dogs.
>> Adam: Fire breathing alligators.
>> Shane: Little glowing babies.
>> Adam: Canadian Moon Patrol Death Robots.
>> Shane: Gigantic, missile spitting, evil... Heads.
>> Adam: And cows.
>> Shane: Cows?
>> Adam: Yes. They... Lay land mines.
>> Shane: These enemies don’t seem to fit at all.
Eventually the game developers just appeared to stop caring about any kind of structure or sanity in any of the levels.
>> Adam:  When you get to one of the later areas, you get to fight off gigantic sentient pump jacks.
>> Shane: They look like this.
>> Adam: Now, I know what you’re all thinking.
Can you eat the pump jack?
>> Shane: Yes. By all that’s holy and good in the world. You can actually eat the pieces of a freshly destroyed pump jack.
>> Adam: So, everything you’re seeing here, the world and how you view and traverse it, seems like a total mess.
>> Shane: But you do have things you need to accomplish to complete each stage.
>> Adam: For example, you’ve got to find a switch to active a satellite defence network...
Which will stop alien pods from dropping in an area.
You do this on each and every level.
>> Shane: Maybe you’ll find the switch but you might not be able to turn it on.
Because you likely don’t have the key card. So you head back out on the worst scavenger hunt ever looking for it.
Then you’ll run into a locked gate. Now your hunt for the first key card has to be put on hold...
While you find the switch that will unlock this gate. You find that switch but that switch is also locked.
So now you have to find the key for THAT switch. Which happens to be a dismembered human hand?!
Shouldn’t be too hard to find in a world where body parts are tossed around like sprinkles on a BIRTHDAY CAKE!
OHHHHHH and it’s not even one hand you’ll need to find. It’s several for multiple gates!
It’s a never ending nightmare of a fetch quest!
>> Adam: Finding these items can take hours, because the graphics are so poor and muddy that everything just tends to blend in.
Oh, and it doesn’t help that there is absolutely no indication on the map of the locations of these items...
Or even a vague direction of where they could possibly be.
>> Shane: Look, let’s say you collect everything.
Don’t you think the challenge of finding all of these stupid items would be enough to get to the next stage?
>> Adam: Nope! Once you turn on the satellite, you’ll need to head to a teleporter to go to the next level.
But here is the kicker folks. The teleporter charges you money to let you go to the next stage.
>> Shane: Aughhhhhh!
So now you need to go back out to the level to find actual freaking credit cards...
That give you enough teleport credits to use the teleporter to finally get to the next stage.
>> Adam: And then there’s the drudgery that is saving your game!
>> Shane: To do this you’ll need to use the teleporter to go to one special spot in the whole wide world that has a save point.
You’ll need to transport multiple times, loading stage on stage which takes way too long to do.
>> Adam: To break up the sheer monotony of all of this awful, awful gameplay...
Tossed into the mix are a bunch of choice live action and CG cutscenes.
>> Shane: Grab some popcorn folks, it’s time to watch some cinematic art!
>> Adam: Here’s a news broadcast:
>> Jeff: It appears that we're getting more and more stories in about these pod sightings in Houston, Kansas City and Denver.
>> Jane: It looks also Jeff like we're getting sightings in Europe.
>> Jeff: Well I guess there goes my summer vacation Jane.
>> Jeff: We at Station KBOT want to remind you that at this point these sightings are unconfirmed.
[Jane screaming in background]
>> Jeff:We have no solid information as yet. It's important to stay calm.
[Jane still screaming in background]
>> Jeff:I want to repeat that these sightings are unconfirmed.
[Jane hasn't stopped screaming in background]
>> Jeff: Jane?- Oh my! No!
>> Shane: Are you serious? How did you not hear her screaming to DEATH?!
>> Adam: Let’s keep going.
>> Jeff: In the footage you're about to see, farmer Wilma Johnson is being attacked by a cow.
Fortunately her husband Zeb was there to capture the tragedy on video.
>> Farmer Wilma Johnson: Zeb! Help me Zeb! Put the camera down you old fart and help me!
>> Shane: Is... Is this supposed to be funny?
>> Adam: And here is how they end the broadcast...
>> Jeff: Despite our dwindling staff we at KBOT intend to follow and report this story to you as long as it is physically possible.
[growl]
>> Jeff: Ahhhhh! AHHHHHH!
>> Adam: Oh, but he’s not dead folks. There’s one sequence more.
>> Jeff: This is Jeff Darling reporting to you from the Twin Lakes district. I'm standing next to what appears to be a pod.
Eyewitnesses report it streaking to the ground at about 5:00 AM this morning. The-
[monster noises]
Wait a minute I think something's happening... Ahhhhhh!
>> Female Anchor: It appears we're having some technical difficulties.
>> Shane: I just want to stop this for a second.
This newswoman is holding her temple... That’s not how an earpiece works!
>> Jeff: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
[sound of Jeff getting speared]
>> Jeff: [gargling his words] Jeff Darling reporting...
>> Shane & Adam: Acting!
>> Shane: Also scattered throughout the game are terrible commercials that make no sense at all.
Like this gem of a product.
>> Female Announcer: Are you tired of your head getting sunburned?
Would you like to look years younger?
Try Headworms. Scientists at the Nematode Institute have discovered a revolutionary treatment to reverse the balding process.
These genetically engineered worms will burrow into your head with very little pain.
And in less than 24 hours you can have a full head of worms and look 20 years younger...
>> Adam: Clearly they’re going for comedy here.
But then we witness other video clips of people being randomly killed by lasers with absolutely no context whatsoever.
The tone is all over the map here, people.
>> Shane: Obviously they had actors for all of their FMV sequences...
But we’re getting a sneaking suspicion that the cast was only available for an afternoon or something.
>> Adam: When you successfully run the crap gauntlet that is this game and defeat the final boss...
You’re gifted a tremendous screw you in the form of the worst cutscene in the game.
>> Shane: They didn’t even make use of their live-action actress. Now you've got a CG character that's rendered in stale, colorless beige.
>> Adam: The background of the Earth looks like it's painted on a board that’s placed a few inches away.
>> Shane: We don’t even really know what is happening here.
>> Adam: Does the Steel Harbinger return to Earth?
Does she stay on that flying planet thing?
Does humanity ever rebuild?
>> Shane: We don’t know.
>> Adam: And we don’t care.
>> Shane: It’s. Just. Bad.
[outro music]
