Steel Diver combines tactics and action in a cat and mouse submarine challenge. Although a little basic, the addition of first person targeting and the novelty of new 3DS features make this an interesting launch title for Nintendo's new portable.

Steel Diver is a submarine game for the 3DS. The bottom screen offers a control panel while the top displays your submarine. The game takes advantage of the 3DS 3D display, but also offers some novel controls.
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Six Second Memory - a review of Steel Diver 3DS as a short story. This week, a submarine recruit is sent on a range of deadly missions, while far away on land a package is carried to its ultimate destination.

The only surprise more welcome than Nintendo's sudden announcement of Luigi's Mansion 3DS at this year's E3 expo was that the game was available to play immediately after the press conference. Normally between a game's annoucement and release there is a drip-feed of tantalising information and screenshots before the lucky few are able to get some quality time with a game nearing completion.
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Steel Diver plunges you beneath the waves in a battle against an evil foreign power. As a submariner everything around you can prove lethal and the smallest error can lead to a horrible death. A loose plot and eclectic delivery means this fund of risk lacked the purpose and impact it could have had.

There are few who dream of plunging hundreds of meters beneath the waves with nothing but a few centimetres of metal between them and a bleak death. Submarines remain forgotten until the shock of news stories horrify the public. The visions are so vivid of a lonely death so far removed from home that it is impossible not to feel a cold chill. Perhaps none said it better than Sir Winston Churchill, "Of all the branches of men in the forces there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils than the submariners."
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Despite not managing to create a coherent experience, Steel Diver offers a technical tense drama with a unique atmosphere. I suspect that many players will want to see more of the elements that make Steel Diver great.

I found Steel Diver to be more akin to three totally disparate submarine-inspired games on the same cart, as opposed to a single cohesive experience. I've known for a while that the game featured a mixture of side-scrolling submarine exploration and combat, first-person torpedo shooting and a tile-based strategy board-game and I was interested to see how these very different styles would coalesce into a single game. The truth is, they never really do; in Steel Diver I found three totally different genres which never quite form a whole.
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