Even if it enjoys a nice art direction, cool audio and nice level-design, Steel Rats hardly deploys its full potential, mostly because of a poorly calibrated gameplay.

Steel Rats, with its demanding combat and big-budget action, pretty much builds a whole new genre around itself. I’ve seen stunt racing and vehicular combat before, but the developers have blended the two so exquisitely that the it defies comparison to anything else. Naturally, Steel Rats ends with an obvious sequel hook, so I’ll end this review with a ‘More, please.’

Steel Rats comes like a breath of fresh air in the platformer genre thanks to the vehicle combat elements mixed in, which boost the game's intensity to a level any hardcore gamer dreams of. While you may start off cursing at how you control your bike, a few hours into the game you'll be going faster and faster, chopping through bots, dodging falling debris and speed running through levels like you've been born doing it.

Steel Rats is built around a fun, refreshing concept, offers more than meets the eye and is varied enough to keep boredom at bay for the whole duration of the game, but could use better visuals and audio, and more creativity when it comes to enemies’ design. [01/2019, p.55]

When Steel Rats works, it works really well. Levels where you’re gunning it through well-charted courses, flipping and spinning through the air, burning through obstacles like a hot knife through butter—these are an absolute joy to play. Somewhere in Steel Rats is a game I would gladly play and recommend. Unfortunately, the pieces just didn’t fall into place often enough for me to call the full game good. The game overall is a very stylistic “okay.”

We really wanted to enjoy Steel Rats (and there were moments when it showed its true potential), but ultimately it’s marred by derivative combat and the occasional erratic behaviour of the bike, especially in jumping sequences, leading to some unfair deaths.

Steel Rats ultimately ends up being a good platforming game idea marred by unfortunate controls and physics, Combine that with a storyline that seems to be trying too hard to be taken seriously and you're left with almost no driving reason to play other than stubbornness, which does not really equate to fun.