If you have fond memories of steering mechs with a 40-button controller in Steel Battalion (original Xbox) almost a decade ago, you may have thought that substituting that monstrous plastic-metal contraption with a Kinect would lead to a gentler, more casual take on the franchise. Forget that notion right now.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is punishingly hardcore. You will painstakingly learn the complex Kinect controls and make minor tactical errors on the battlefield that turn your spry mech into a pile of rubble in seconds. Suck it up and approach the experience with that in mind, and you’ll enjoy the game.

Though it’s the year 2080, military tech has a World War II feel. The overarching “Asia vs. everybody else” conflict takes a backseat to the battles — most of them wars of attrition that require a “measure twice, shoot once” mentality. You may be surrounded by tons of steel, but plenty can go wrong inside your rig: shots to your visors can severely limit visibility, mines can slow traversal to a crawl, and wounded squadmates can make intel-gathering and reloading a massive undertaking. Even though your objective almost always involves making big things blow up, the game still delivers a wide variety of mission objectives and locales to stomp through, with each of the game’s seven campaigns providing a single co-op mission.

Your teammates within the rig offer valuable intel and engaging chit-chat.

Unfortunately, in many sequences, the game’s difficulty seems a bit too forced. For one thing, the map is plain awful: it’s basic, it’s hard to read, and it turns off if you use a rear or side camera. Moreover, many missions are made far more difficult by vague objectives — particularly troubling because roughly one mission per campaign will fail to give you vital information, or worse, will give you misinformation about your objective. It’s a shame Heavy Armor’s biggest flaw comes from an issue that a few lines of dialogue or in-mission text could have fixed, when the gameplay provides enough natural moments of intensity on its own.

Fortunately, once you get the hang of the controls, you won’t have to battle with that particular aspect of the game’s hardcore difficulty. Many aspects of your mech need to be micromanaged, and while a few are a bit too extraneous — opening the vent to prevent smoke asphyxiation shouldn’t be up to the guy steering the mech, we say — you’ll have the shorthand down within the first campaign. Make sure the instruction booklet is handy during your early hours, brave through the misread movements, and controlling your mech will become (almost) second-nature. You’ll still make a few goofs — that bank panel is tough to manage when smoke is obscuring your vision — and don’t expect Kinect to offer the same level of foolproof fidelity as controller-based movement and shooting.

When you first meet the heavy VT, you can't destroy it with your normal fire: you'll need to take advantage of environmental explosions.

Enemies will occasionally breach your hatch or other openings in your mech with sudden grenade or melee attacks, requiring immediate intervention.

While we weren’t surprised by Heavy Armor’s hardcore difficulty or having to get used to its controls, what did shock us is how the game creates an intense bond with our squadmates. Plenty of war-focused games try to build a brotherhood, but in most cases, that involves shooting through waves of enemies with light A.I. support spouting occasional witticisms. Heavy Armor, on the other hand, really builds up your attachment to fellow members of Bravo team by sticking your lively four-person crew in a space no bigger than a port-a-potty, and making their survival almost as much a priority as the rig’s. If your missile loader is hit with a wayward bullet or your second-in-command is stabbed through a hole in the hull, it’s more than just a temporary inconvenience that requires you to pay more attention to the map or your missile stockpile. Seeing a teammate bleed to death next to you, and then be absent for the rest of the extensive campaign, really drives home how tough the battle is and makes you want to keep their replacement safe.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor isn’t for everyone. In fact, some people may be more turned off by the potential for error in its Kinect controls than by the Xbox version’s overbearing, multi-button controller. The game’s mission objectives shouldn’t be this frustrating, but much of that aggravation washes away when your limping, cracked-visor, ammo-depleted mech fires off a miracle shot to live another day. War has never been this intense, and you should try to take part.

If you take too much damage to your visor, you’ll have a tough time making sense of the battlefield. Better hope your periscope is still working!

PUBLISHER: Capcom  •  DEVELOPER: From Software  •  ESRB: Mature  •  MULTIPLAYER: 2–4 in co-op play on some stages  •  ACHIEVEMENTS: A tough battle  •  COST: $60  •  RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2012

On Xbox 360 (Kinect Required)

+ Clever blend of Kinect motion-sensing and standard controller action.

+ Really drives home the roughness of warfare and the camaraderie of platoons.

– Many mission objectives are too vague, making missions artificially hard; Kinect movements occasionally misread.

? To mirror the original Xbox’s Steel Battalion, can we get full-on multiplayer in the sequel?

7.5