Iron Storm (PC video game)
Iron Storm is a 2002 First-Person Shooter / Third-Person Shooter game, created by French developer 4x Studios and published by Dreamcatcher Interactive. The game is a fairly typical war FPS, but offers lots of good level design and a huge amount of intelligent opponents. What sets it apart from most games of the genre, is its very unique Alternate History setting and engaging atmosphere.
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This delightful and cheery war started in July 1914. It is now February 1964, and believe it or not... it's still being waged...
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In the game's Backstory, World War One never ended in 1918 and dragged well into the 1960s. The reason behind this was a charismatic White Russian general, a certain Baron Ugenberg. He managed to unite lots of former Tsarist soldiers and warriors from Siberian and Mongolian tribes under his banner during the Russian Civil War. With the help of their constantly growing numbers, he succeded in crushing the Bolshevik Revolution and reuniting former Tsarist Russia, grandiously renaming it "the Russo-Mongolian Empire". But his conquest didn't end there, as he decided to build a mighty pan-Eurasian empire, having delussions of being a modern day successor of Genghis Khan. He succeded in claiming the entire eastern half of Europe. The frontlines between his newly founded empire and the remaining western democracies came to a halt in the late 1920s, cutting Germany in half. The game starts in early 1964, when the United States of Western Europe manage to discover information about a secret Doomsday Device being built by the baron's scientists. Enter you, lieutenant James Anderson, an aging Shell-Shocked Veteran, sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines in order to locate and neutralize the secret weapon project.
Sounds like a fairly straight-forward action and espionage story ? Well then : Expect a few interesting twists on your way...
You can find a Let's Play of it here.
Tropes featured in the game:
- All There in the Manual: The names and specs of the weapons and the short biographies of the main characters. The original manual that shipped with the game even had a few Fictional Documents to better explain the various details and tone of the setting.
- Alternate History: One of its selling points, no less. It was arguably one of the first mainstream shooter games where AH was a deliberate part of the backstory and plot. It's also one of the few games that are set in World War One (or inspired by it).
- Artificial Brilliance: Though the game's budget wasn't big (it's nearly an indie game), the AI of the enemy soldiers is surprisingly high and cunning. You usualy can't lure them to fall for an old trick learned in other FPS games. If nothing else, the AI makes the game really challenging. There are occasional moments of Artificial Stupidity, but thankfully, they're rare.
- Big Bad: Baron Ugenberg. This gets subverted hard in the Twist Ending, where you discover he's become just an old senile Punch Clock Villain after years of gradual Villain Decay.
- But Thou Must!: Given the game's dodgy handling of stealth mechanics, there really isn't any way to escape from the Wolfenburg lab without murdering every single scientist you find. To make it up to you, there's one officer cowering in a bathroom in the next lever who's death is entirely optional.
- Call a Rabbit A Smeerp: Television (used mainly for newscasts and propaganda) is referred to as DRT, which stands for "Deutsche-Russische Tagesschau" ("German-Russian News(caster)"). As the in-game dialogue indicates, it was apparently invented first in Ugenberg's empire and only later smuggled to the USWE.
- Cool Guns: Cool? Yes. Shiny? Never.
- Cool Old Guy: Lieutenant Anderson is technically young (around 40), but he's already graying, and looks well into his 50s. He's a war-hardened Badass Normal veteran nonetheless.
- Cool Train: Baron Ugenberg's fierce "Tsar Ivan" armored train, a hulking steel monstrosity. And you get to spend an entire mission aboard it, gradually fighting your way through it's entire length, from the tail car to the locomotive. It's a surprisingly awesome mission.
- Controllable Helplessness: When you break into the lab, you are immediately captured. Rather than switching to a cutscene, the game will not allow you to proceed until you manually discard ALL of your weapons and toss them to the nearest officer mook. Now THAT's twisting the knife.
- Well, technically you can just shoot the officer and run through the open door...at which point you'll get mowed down by an invincible rocket-launcher-wielding mook.
- Crapsack World / Dystopia: Where... to... begin...
- Lets just say that the game's setting isn't a nice place to live (or die) in.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Selecting a weapon works a bit differently than in most FPS games. First, you select it with the appropriate keybind or the mouse wheel, and then you have to click the left mouse button so your character will unholster it and put it in his hands.
- Diesel Punk: Oodles of it. The firearms are generally fairly bulky and boxy in shape, with a very Used Future look. Most of them (including the most common assault rifles) are a bizarre mix of early 20. century tech and more modern elements : Though some are equipped with state-of-the-art laser designators, they also have massive built-in coolers (a Shout-Out to old World War One heavy machine guns). Now that's some serious Schizo-Tech...
- Elite Mooks: The Russo-Mongolians have their Siberian troopers, armored Gas Mask Mooks with enhanced health and equipped with a full-auto rifle that fires explosive, one-shot-kill rounds.
- In the final level, you encounter Consortium troopers, the soldiers of the American military-industrial complex that is secretly prepetuating the war. They have enhanced health and are armed with the best assault rifle in the game.
- Expy / Captain Ersatz: It's painfully obvious that Baron Ugenberg is based on none other than the infamous baron Roman Nikolai Ungern-Sternberg. The only real difference between them is that Ugenberg was Sternberg's opposite when it comes to competence.
- Earlier in development, Ugenberg was directly referred to as Ungern-Sternberg. A few traces of this survive (particularly with a tank designated the "US-III").
- Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: The game isn't a true tactical shooter per se, but still requires you to take precise aim, choose your gear wisely and carefully fight your way through enemy territory. Do Not Run With a Gun is paramount not only for achieving victory, but for basic survival as well, in each of the six campaign missions. Sighted Guns Are Low Tech is carefully semi-averted (you can see them on every weapon, but can't really use them in-game and have to rely on traditional FPS reticules or a scope).
- Fake Brit: Cécille Newcastle is supposed to be a female British officer, but her voice actress has an undeniable American accent throughout the entire game.
- The Federation: The United States of Western Europe seems to be this, compared to Ugenberg's opressive empire. At first, that is. As you gradually progress through the game, you start becoming increasingly aware of the painful truth : Both regimes, despite their outer coating of White and Black Morality, are actually Not So Different.
- First Person Ghost: Averted. Arguably one of the first games where you could easily look down and see most of your legs and feet.
- Forever War: 50 years of bloodshed and no end in sight. It gets all the more ridiculous when you learn it has turned into a literal War for Fun And Profit, with the arms industry and armies being an integral part of the international stock exchange. And the Twist Ending implies that the whole conflict has degenerated into nothing more than an Enforced Cold War.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Many of Ugenberg's soldiers, in addition to their Putting On the Reich uniforms and Mongolian-style Nice Hats. Like this guy.
- Giant Mook: In the console remake, World War Zero, a more dramatic "final boss" battle is added in which you fight A pair of Giant Mooks wearing steampunk power armor and equipped with dual wielded miniguns and acid-throwers.
- Gun Porn: If you're an enthusiast of Used Future style guns...
- Gunship Rescue: Bulky dieselpunk helicopters constantly scout above the main frontlines. You even see one of them get shot down and crash while running through a trench.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Oddly, not the protagonist. It's implied that humanity as a whole has become completely accustomed to war and has turned into a race of militaristic Crazy Survivalists.
- Hollywood Silencer: Averted. Though the silenced pistol still makes the obligatory "fwip" sound, it's also pretty loud and can be easily heard by enemy soldiers if fired at a close distance. The pistol has little use in most of the game though - except for an occasional Stealth Based Mission or two.
- Humans Are Bastards / Gray and Gray Morality: At first, the conflict between the USWE and Ugenberg's Empire seems like a classic case of Good Republic, Evil Empire. This gets ruthlessly deconstructed as the game progresses. And then there's a Twist Ending, which... well, read it for yourself in one of the lower entries...
- Hyperspace Arsenal: An effectively done aversion of this trope (with a few minor hiccups though). You can only carry one weapon from each class at a time. This can get pretty tricky, especially with slot 4, which houses most of your heavier firearms (marksman rifles, assault rifles, portable machine guns and grenade launchers). This forces you to choose your loadout carefully according to your current situation, since you can't carry both a marksman rifle and an assault rifle at the same time, etc. Sadly, it also gets a little ridiculous occasionally : You can't carry a simple silenced pistol and an SMG at the same time (as the tutorial is eager to inform you).
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
- It's Up to You: Played straight.
- Just a Stupid Accent / As Long As It Sounds Foreign: Nicely averted. The Russian and German soldiers are all voiced by genuine native speakers and their chatter can often give away important information about what they're plotting against you.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Especially if you're the one who's carrying them.
- Mega Corp: "The Consortium" of the USWE. They deal primarily in heavy industry and arms manufacturing.
- More Dakka: Never enough in this game... Capturing an enemy's stationary machine gun and using it against them is particularly dakka-tacular...
- Nintendo Hard: The game is pretty hard and unforgiving even on Easy and Normal. The Hard and Realistic difficulty levels force you to really up the ante in terms of stealthiness and well-planned surprise attacks.
- No-Gear Level / Stealth Based Mission: One of the missions starts with Anderson taken prisoner, with all of his weaponry confiscated. Luckily, you manage to acquire a melee weapon shortly after the start of the level and then carefully escape the prison and collect some new gear.
- Obligatory War Crime Scene: Several. A particularly memorable one occurs early on in the first level, where you glimpse a USWE conscript gunning down a defenceless soldier of Ugenberg's empire, who's desperately pleading for mercy : "Lass mich leben ! Ich bitte dich..."
- There's also one building where you find a lot of USWE soldiers that have been lynched, drowned in bathtubs, mutilated, and otherwise tortured to death. Another creepy place is an abandoned trench near a bombed-out church, with a pile of skulls on spikes and a religious icon looted from the church lying right next to them. This is all arranged to look like a small altar.
- Old Soldier : Lieutenant Anderson.
- One Bullet Clips : Averted.
- Putting On the Reich: Subverted hard. The uniforms of the Russo-Mongolian soldiers are mostly derived from the WWI uniforms of Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia, with some early Soviet designs thrown into the mix. Due to the Eurasian nature of the empire, a lot of military clothing also has various central Asian and Mongolian-influenced elements (helmets with the outward appearance of a traditional Mongol nomad hat, etc.). Ironically, the uniforms of USWE officers show more signs of this trope, though the uniforms of the USWE grunts are just a mishmash of French, German, British and American uniforms of WWI and WWII.
- Real Is Brown: Both played straight and subverted.
- Red Shirt / Redshirt Army: The only defining traits of the regular USWE soldiers seem to be ridiculous Genre Blindness and Dying Like Animals.
- Retro Universe / Schizo-Tech / Anachronism Stew: To a degree. Soldiers have uniforms and weapons with elements that would fit well in not just World War One and World War Two, but The Present Day as well. There are other wildly anachronistic elements too : Modern long-distance radio earpieces and small computers resembling those from the 1980s coexisting with 1930s-style television. Surprisingly primitive tanks right next to much more advanced gunships.
- Fridge Brilliance: The tanks look surprisingly archaic compared to other military vehicles (in fact, like they're barely out of the 1920s) and are few and far between because the Consortium wants to keep the war going - and it would likely ware out far sooner if trench warfare was avoided by using larger numbers of more advanced tanks. But that also makes it a bit of Fridge Logic, since the fairly modern attack helicopters we see over the front would have done the same job equally well...
- Rule of Cool: It isn't a surreal dieselpunk dystopia for nothing...
- Scenery Gorn: So much of it goes Serial Escalation. Eerie Ghost Towns bombed backed to the Stone Age and abandoned for decades ? Mordor-esque frontlines ? Creepy run-down industrial laboratories ? You name it...
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Everyone.
- Silent Protagonist: Besides the trailer and a few cutscenes, lieutenant Anderson apparently hasn't got much to say. But hey, can't blame him...
- Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility : A little mushy, especially considering the lenghth of the war (Europe was already very exhausted by the conflict in 1918). The success of Ugenberg's early continent-spanning conquests is exaggerated for obvious dramatic reasons. Everything in the Backstory is definitely done on purpose to evoke an Orwellian-like atmosphere of a neverending industrial conflict. Other than that, the setting is quite realistic and features no alien or supernatural intervention. So, it's more or less a Type II.
- Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty / Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very cynical and very bleak in tone.
- Sniper Rifle: The Dragunov Sniperskaya (seen on the page picture) is a really useful Cool Gun. You receive one already at the start of the first level, but it avoids being a Disc One Nuke thanks to Crippling Overspecialization : It's really worthless for anything other than precision sniping at greater distances...
- Space Filling Empire: Ugenberg's Russo-Mongolian Empire becomes this very fast and the USWE is forced to do the same, working as a counter-weight superpower. Little change in territorial borders happens since the late 1920s and the two political blocks are still locked in a firm Cold War with each other in the 60s.
- Spiritual Successor: The Bet on a Soldier series of FPSes were developed by the same team that worked on Iron Storm. Much of their setting, plot, and weaponry are not-so-loosely based on the latter.
- Standard FPS Guns: But with a Diesel Punk flavour.
- Sticks to The Back: Averted surprisingly well. You can clearly see the various firearms and weapons you're currently carrying - strapped to your backpack or put away in different holsters (which are attached not only to your belt, but your trousers as well).
- Stupid Jetpack Ugenberg: But this trope is present to only a minor degree...
- Twist Ending / Anticlimax Boss: Handled really well. Beware, major spoilers ahead ! When Anderson finally storms the Reichstag in Berlin and meets Ugenberg face-to-face, it turns out the old mad emperor is only a powerless figurehead now, a shadow of his former self. His empire is ruled more by various General Rippers, Corrupt Corporate Executives, Arms Dealers, ObstructiveBureaucrats and he himself wields little actual power. Anderson then makes it to the escape point and is picked-up by a USWE helicopter. His superior congratulates him for completing the mission, but as the camera looms away from the chopper, we hear a muffled You Have Outlived Your Usefulness announcement, then a gunshot and Anderson moaning in pain. It's implied that Anderson's superior killed him - in order to keep the truth about Ugenberg's declining power a secret and help perpetuate the Forever War. Makes you wonder if both of the superpowers aren't just Evil Versus Evil, competing in who can make a bigger profit off the war and be the most careless and evil...
- Alternate Ending (also a Twist Ending): When Anderson storms the Reichstag, an assault by Consortium (the American company/companies that are supplying everything to the USWE) troops happens at the same time, forcing Anderson to defend himself against not only the Russo-Mongolian troops, but also against the Consortium. He eventually reaches a room with a CCTV screen connected to other point in the Reichstag, and Anderson sees how the Consortium man that has been supporting him in the mission argues with Urgenberg: this discussion reveals that the Consortium has been supplying the Russo-Mongolian armies as well, that Urgenberg plans to stop the war in order to become a peacemaker after so many years of war and Urgenberg is assasinated by the Consortium man, who flees. Anderson manages to defeat The Dragon and get on the helicopter where the Consortium man is fleeing, but dies at his hands... and in the end a TV report is shown saying that war will continue in Urgenberg's name.
- Your Mom: One of the voice files for alerted Russian soldiers features the angrily pronounced "Tvoyu matz !".
- Updated Rerelease : As World War Zero. Published three years after the original, but sold only in the UK.
- War for Fun And Profit: And... how!
- War Is Hell: It doesn't get more hellish and crapsacky (at least visually) than in this game.
- World War One: painted by a team-up of George Orwell and Hieronymus Bosch, apparently...
- X Meets Y: Seriously, it's as if All Quiet On the Western Front, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Warhammer 40000 had a particularly rough threesome.
