‘Steel Battalion’ a godsend for mech fans

There is nothing practical about “Steel Battalion: Line of Contact.” But that’s what makes this game the most unique experience on Xbox Live.

First, the price tag is $200. The game comes tucked inside a suitcase-sized, camouflage-green box that holds the most impressive home console controller I’ve ever seen — a giant three-panel cockpit adorned with green and red flashing lights.

Serious fans of the game love it. They must, because it only works for “Line of Contact” and the original “Steel Battalion,” a single-player campaign that came out in 2002. The new attraction is that you can play online — only online. This means you’re at an extreme disadvantage if you’re new to this series.

I found a guy online who was nice enough to lower his guns for half an hour to walk me through the equipment. The alternative is to read a 38-page monument to geekdom, a manual filled with detailed instructions, historical information and schematics. Yuck.

There are 41 buttons, triggers, dials and toggle switches, two fist-sized joysticks and three big foot pedals. Setting this thing up is almost like moving the dashboard of a small car into your television viewing area. You need a table, a chair and a place for the foot pedals. Thankfully, it all goes together simply with a few snaps and plug connections.

“Line of Contact” is one of those popular robot-battle games called mechs. The intricate hardware allows you to wade into war inside a 10-story-tall vertical tank, and emphasizes a virtual experience more real than any other mech game I’ve played.

Even the viewing screen tells you you’re playing something more intense. You peer at the battlefield through a cluster of gauges, meters, warning lights and text updates.

Taking ponderous steps toward the enemy, you keep your hands on the left joystick, which steers and controls your point of view, and the right joystick, which aims and fires your weapons.

At any moment, though, you might fiddle with the other controls. These include a gear shifter, buttons for live headset communications with other players, map buttons, weapons controls and a key that throws out chaff to lead an incoming missile astray. There are even buttons to wash your windshield and deploy fire extinguishers.

The most important button sits under a protective cover for emergency use only. I hesitated to punch it, until I figured out that my pilot profiles were being erased because I wasn’t ejecting from my burning tank. Stupid.

The online play hosts two teams of up to five players. This is a game where graphics take a lesser role to the hardware, but they were well done.

Capcom, the game maker, has reported connection difficulties, but I was able to play with no real problems — except for repeated killings because of my inexperience with the monolithic controller.

But heck, that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone buying this game. You don’t plunk down 200 clams for something like this unless you’re ready to invest some serious practice time.