Z: Steel Soldiers returns to active duty, with reworked art and controls

The Bitmap Brothers' robo-RTS sequel Z: Steel Soldiers is set to relaunch on Steam tonight, 13 years after its original release. TickTock Games are handling the port, while KISS and Kavcom are publishing. We can expect "significantly enhanced 3D graphics", apparently, along with reworked controls—compared with images of the original game, it does look a whole lot less flatter and smudgier. As a result, the game's system requirements have also shot up a fair few notches—but there's a good chance you'll be able to run it anyway.

Here are the minimum requirements, for posterity's sake:

OS: Vista SP1, 7 or 8

Processor: Intel Core 2 or better, AMD 64 X2 or better

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Intel GMA 950 GeForce 7 Series Radeon X1000 series

Hard Drive: 900 MB available space

Sound Card: Yes

I can't speak to the quality of this newly spruced up Steel Soldiers, but it's good to have another new(ish) RTS on Steam, even if it is a new(ish) version of an old game—Meridian: New World and Planetary Annihilation are feeling awful lonely on there. Here's a trailer:

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.