nnounced last year at Tokyo Game Show before Kinect hit stores, the idea of a new Steel Battalion game for a controller-free hardware d-on seemed almost comical. The original Steel Battalion is remembered by hardcore collectors for being packed in with one of the most complicated console controllers of all time. Now the series is back with Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor as Capcom gives development responsibilities to From Software, and in the place of two control sticks, three pedals, and 40 buttons, you’re left with motion controls to fill the gap. Could that possibly work? After seeing it in action, we think it just might. During our hands-off, developer controlled demo, we quickly understood that Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor’s greatest strength is its use of Kinect and the standard controller in unison. The fact that a controller is involved came as a relief to us, since a mech combat game like this one demands precision that waving your arms about can’t really do on its own. For the core mechanic of pointing you weapons at stuff and blowing it to smithereens, it’s all on the controller, but there’s a myriad of things happening around that central experience that can only be done with Kinect. Taking place in a future where a virus caused technology to basically be set back to the 1920s, humanity has had to to quickly get back in the swing of things now that computers are gone. In that turmoil America was invaded by a country that sounds like some sort of Communist conglomeration, and in 2082 America is slowly taking back their states, one bloody, mech-filled battle at a time. In this war you pilot a VT or Vertical Tank, the walking war machines central to the conflict. From inside the VT a team of soldiers run the contraption, with you manning the main controls. In the background your support team is reloading the canons, checking diagnostics, and talking plainly yet poetically about the nature of war. From standard view inside the cockpit, which is seen when sitting and having the controller in a resting position on your lap, you can turn around and check on your squad mates with a quick sweep of your hand in the direction of the corner of the tank you want to check. As we were introduced to the motion controls they came off as a mix of useful and gimmicky. Pratical tricks included turning a knob to switch your main weapon, pulling down your camera array to view the battlefield from different angles, and standing up to exit the top of the tank to get an unobstructed view of the battlefield. The more gimmicky uses included shaking a squad member’s hand, putting your hands up to your eyes to use binoculars while standing, and in one of the funnier moments of the demo, punching a hysterical teammate. As the battle gets too intense for one member of the support team, he tries to run out of the tank and, after pulling him back in with a quick overhead grab with your right hand, you then punch him in the face multiple times to get him to calm down, which works for some reason. That brief exchange of therapeutic punches highlights that was peppered with obscenities highlights another important thing about the game: it seems heavily aimed at the western, mature market. The battles are incredibly bloody, with VT machinegun fire hitting human infantry and exploding them into bloody messes on impact. Additionally, the soldiers have swear-heavy conversations about how effed up a particular battle is, and how they don’t need this shit. The overall look also seems more Western, with character designs and settings taking a much more American flavor. Though the start of the demo was frontloaded with Kinect-based actions, the deeper we got in, the more the controller took center stage. With a quick push forward of both hands and the controller, the pilot enters the standard action view, as the VT slowly walked forward, blasting enemies both human and mech to bits. While standard munitions just bounce off the exterior, heavy blasts from opposing VTs cast about the cockpit and its inhabitants violently. After taking down a particularly heavily armored VT and some guard towers, the day was won and the soldiers had taken back Manhattan. After the brief demo we were impressed with how the controller and Kinect were able to work together for a richer-looking experience that could be something special when its 2012 release rolls around. Though we don’t think all the Kinect uses we saw were wholly necessary, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor could be the first Kinect game that successfully caters to hardcore players instead of dancing grandmas and excitable children. However, with all the different ways you use Kinect controls in the cockpit, we bet this will have one hell of a tutorial.

The Final Fantasy series as whole has one of the best music catalogs in all of gaming, so the idea to make a rhythm game featuring all the classics from the franchise's history is about as solid as it gets. With awesome rhythm games on the DS like Elite Beat Agents and Rhythm Heaven already setting a strong standard, our expectations were high as we picked up Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy for the very first time. After playing through all the tracks available on the TGS demo, it looks like the Final Fantasy rhythm game is right on track.

First, let's talk about the basic mechanics. Like many rhythm games, Theatrhythm features several kinds of notes that you must hit in time to the music in a specific way. Basic notes require a simple tap, arrow notes require a quick flick in the indicated direction, and hold notes require you to hold the stylus to the screen for the indicated duration. Accuracy is graded on each note, with "critical" appropriately being the highest grade possible. Similar to DDR, your character has a life bar and you HP goes up and down depending on how many notes you hit/miss, failing you out of the song if it hits zero.
From the start, it's clear that Theatrhythm isn't just a generic rhythm game with a Final Fantasy skin. First, there are three types of levels that correspond with the three major sections of an FF game – battles, exploration, and cutscenes. Battles are quite similar in format to DDR, where notes move in a straight line across the screen. The set-up looks like an FF battle, with a monster on the left and four party members on the right. As the notes scroll across the top screen, you can tap anywhere on the bottom screen to hit them. Once we got a good streak going on our first battle (the battle theme for the original FF), we automatically triggered a summon, which felt a lot like activating star power in rock band.

Field exploration levels switch things up a bit. Whereas the hold notes in battles are all just a straight line where you don't have to move the stylus at all, the field sections we played had lots of hold notes with wavy lines where we had to move our stylus on the bottom screen to keep it lined up with each note's twisting path. And whereas the battle and exploration levels are side-scrolling, the cutscenes present a fixed screen where the scene plays in the background and the notes circle around in place.
While the highly stylized, over-the-top chibi-size adorableness of the art won't appeal to everyone, we absolutely love it. It fits well for this type of game too – it's a spinoff, not a serious Final Fantasy game, and as such it shouldn't look like one (and if the sprites look familiar, it's because they're from the Japan-only Kingdom Hearts Mobile game). Plus, there's just something fun about seeing characters we've known and loved for so long in a completely different light than we're used to.

The music too, is obviously fantastic. The final game will have over 50 tracks, with three songs each for each game in the numbered series, from the first Final Fantasy through FFXIII (our favorite track from the demo was probably Tina's theme from FFVI, but it's tough to choose).
We're eagerly anticipating an official announcement that Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy will be localized outside of Japan, so look for more news as soon as that happens.