Iron Storm is a quintessential cult game. The game has a number of design flaws, mostly due to the fact that the developer, 4X Studios, was running out of money and rushed the game just to get something out the door before they folded. As a result, mechanics are clunky, features are left out, and unfinished areas are literally walled off. The game is certainly beatable, but it's not very friendly to newcomers, and there are parts where it's hard to figure out what exactly the player is supposed to do to progress.

However, for those who struggle and persevere, Iron Storm can provide its own delights. I found this game back when I was a high schooler who was deep in the alternate history scene, and it was love at first sight. The game takes the initial premise of a First World War that ground on for five decades and builds this grimy, dilapidated industrial hell that blends together elements of World War I, World War II, the Russian Civil War, with a seasoning of the colonial wars in Algeria and Vietnam. It's a unique setting for a game, and it's one you can get sucked into if you know what to do.

Since I love sharing this game with people, I thought I would give back to the community and put together a basic guide for Iron Storm. I'm not much of a guide-writer, but hopefully what follows with serve you well in the trenches and get you out of any sticky situation.

- By default, the Steam overlay will not activate in Iron Storm, and you time played will likewise not be recorded. To get them working again, go into your install directory (right-click Iron Storm in your library, select Properties > Local Files > Browse Local Files...), rename the application "IronStorm" to "IronStormBackup", make a copy of the application "Game", rename the copy "IronStorm" and that should do it. Depending on your machine you may have to dump "IronStormBackup" into the Recycle Bin to get it working. If the ingame sound disappears after doing this, just delete "IronStorm" and rename the backup "IronStorm".

- Before you jump into a new game for the first time, go to your keyboard options and rebind the "use" key to "E". The default bind is to "Enter" for some strange reason.

- In general, the game plays a lot like the original Half-Life, with more snipers and enemies with explosive weapons. As a result, it is best that you make a hard save every time you start a new level and quicksave often. It is also a good idea to make other hard saves every so often just in case the game crashes or the autosave is corrupted somehow.

- On the upside, because this is an older game, it's not too difficult to figure out where and how events are triggered and how you can use the level geometry to your advantage.

- If you're having a lot of trouble seeing enemies, turning on aim assist will cause a red icon to appear whenever the reticle passes over them. Aim assist will also cause your bullets to "curve" towards enemies.

- The game has stealth mechanics, but they don't work very well. Fortunately, there are only a few instances in the game where stealth is mandatory, and I will be pointing out when they occur and how to deal with them.

- You can swap between first- and third-person view whenever you want, but the camera placement makes third-person essentially useless for combat. (In spite of this, every level starts with you in third person for some dumb reason.) Only switch if you need to do some platforming or tightrope walking. Incidentally, when you go into third-person all the weapons you have equipped will appear on Lt. Anderson's character model. Handy, that.

- On your travels, you will encounter ICTs (Information and Combat Terminal), rectangular wall-mounted terminals used to record text logs, and DRTs (Deutsche-Russische Tageschau), which look like clunky portable televisions. Use these whenever you find them, since they will generally give you clues about upcoming enemies and levels. DRTs are combination televisions and radar sets; to toggle between the two, hit "W" or "S" and left-click.

- Using mounted weapons is a little finicky. Holster your weapons by pressing "1" and left-clicking, position yourself directly in front of the weapon's controls, and press "E/Enter" to attach yourself to them.

- To switch weapons, hit the appropriate number and left-click. Pretty obvious, but it is possible to get yourself mixed up and have the wrong weapon equipped in a tense moment.

You have slots for six weapons and five types of grenades. Unfortunately, the slots are restricted to certain weapon types, so you have to pick and choose your arsenal. Even more unfortunately, a number of weapons are situational or are more effective in an enemy AI's hands than a player's, which means your actual choices for loadouts are rather limited.

To holster your weapons, hit "1". To swap a weapon for a different one, press "Delete" to drop your current weapon and just run over the other one to pick it up.

i. Melee Weapons (hit "2")

Trench Saber
Damage: Average

You start the game with this weapon equipped. It's exactly what it says on the tin. Really only useful for breaking boxes and glass and stealth-killing enemies from behind.

ii. Pistols (hit "3")

Silenced Pistol
Model Name: Snake B.
Damage: Average
Rate of Fire: Slow
Accuracy: Good
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 8/64

You start the game with this weapon equipped. It's not that useful in normal combat, but its ability to instantly kill enemies with headshots has some utility. Get this weapon when you need to do some sneaking and stay undetected.

Machine Pistol
Model Name: Heckler & Koch MP-6
Damage: Light
Rate of Fire: Average
Accuracy: Average
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 20/500

You first find this weapon near the start of the game, in the target range in the 3rd lines. Not a great weapon, but it spits out bullets quickly and its ammunition is used for three other heavy weapons, so this should be your default pistol.

iii. Sniper Rifles (hit "4")

Sniper Rifle
Model Name: Dragunov Snaperskaya
Damage: High
Rate of Fire: Slow
Accuracy: Very Good
Range: Very Good
Magazine/Total Ammo: 5/25

You first find this near the start of the game, in one of the dormitories on the 2nd lines. Thankfully Iron Storm gives you a dedicated slot for this weapon, and you'll be needing it throughout the game. Ammo is relatively plentiful, but don't use it on every little grunt; save it for distant or heavily armored targets.

iv. Shotguns (hit "5")

Shotgun
Model Name: Remington M910
Damage: Average
Rate of Fire: Slow
Accuracy: Poor
Range: Short
Magazine/Total Ammo: 4/32

You first find this weapon in the room you start in. Overall it`s a very poor videogame shotgun; the magazine is small, the range is abysmal, and you can really only use it to kill one enemy at a time by jamming it in their face. Use it to open boxes or duel with one or two people in very tight spaces, if you must.

v. Heavy Weapons (hit "6")

Assault Rife
Model Name: MG36-A
Damage: Average
Rate of Fire: Rapid
Accuracy: Average
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 35/500

You first find this weapon in the first level during the first major firefight of the game. It's a decent assault rifle, best used against incoming groups of enemies.

Semi-Automatic Rifle
Model Name: Simonov K-S12
Damage: Average
Rate of Fire: Average
Accuracy: Good
Range: Good
Magazine/Total Ammo: 10/500

You first find this weapon at the beginning of the second level, just as you exit the first underground bunker complex and enter the enemy camp. You can switch to scoped viewing and back by right-clicking. It's excellent when you want to engage from a distance, but the small magazine means you have to play more tactically. Given how prevalent snipers are in this game, it's a good weapon to have around.

Rocket Launcher
Model Name: B-M50
Damage: High
Rate of Fire: Very Slow
Accuracy: Average
Range: Good
Magazine/Total Ammo: 1/10

You first find this weapon in the second level, in the small camp during the helicopter boss fight. It's a tube with a scope you can use by right-clicking. You'll rarely carry it around for long, but it's invaluable against heavily armored targets.

NOTE: There is a bug in the game that allows you to keep collecting ammunition for this weapon (small black boxes with their lids ajar) even if you're at maximum capacity, but won't add the excess to your ammunition pool. In other words, it's very easy to accidentally deprive yourself of extra rockets by picking everything up blindly.

Heavy Machine Gun
Model Name: VIVDA KSK
Damage: High
Rate of Fire: Average
Accuracy: Average
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 5/25

This weapon is first found near the end of the second level, in the hands of the first Siberian boss. The manual describes the weapon as a "heavy machine gun," but it shoots explosive shells instead of bullets, possibly due to some developer oversight. (I like to call it a "flak launcher," but your mileage may vary.) It's ultimately a weapon that's far deadlier in the hands of the AI than the player, but it can be enjoyed as a sort of mini-rocket launcher. This weapon tends to be a nasty surprise for you in confined areas, so bob and weave and make sure to kill enemies wielding this weapon first. I've only ever been able to find two(!) ammunition pickups for this weapon in the game, so you will have to stick to scavenging ammunition for this weapon from fallen enemies.

Grenade Launcher
Model Name: M203 40mm
Damage: High
Rate of Fire: Slow
Accuracy: :p
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 4/32

This weapon first appears early on in the third level. It fires small grenades in an arc and uses its own specialized ammunition. Grenades normally bounce around a bit after they hit the ground, but will detonate instantly if they hit an enemy. Occasionally useful for killing snipers in Wolfenberg, but otherwise don't bother.

Special Forces Assault Rifle
Model Name: F-Jane 10
Damage: Average
Rate of Fire: Very Rapid
Accuracy: Average
Range: Average
Magazine/Total Ammo: 50/500

The weapon appears late in the third level between the two tank bosses in the hands of two mysterious individuals. Whenever you find this weapon, you should use it. It has a high rate of fire, decent damage, a right-click scope, and a huge magazine. Curiously, this weapon is not fielded by either of the major powers in the war.

vii. Grenades (hit "7" through "-")

You have a wide variety of personal explosives of varying degrees of usefulness at your disposal. You start finding all of them regularly from the second level onwards, where they can be scavenged from the intact bodies of soldiers or from ammo boxes. You can "cook" a grenade by holding down left-click, but keep in mind that a grenade ticks while cooking and will explode after the forth tick. While you have a grenade in hand, you can right-click to holster the grenade and switch back to the weapon you were previously using.

Standard Grenade (hit "7")
Appearance: Green grenade
Capacity: 10

These are your run-of-the-mill videogame grenades.

Cluster Grenade (hit "8")
Appearance: Red grenade
Capacity: 5

When they detonate, these grenades release a cluster of smaller munitions which explode in turn, causing significant damage over a wider area. Useful against groups of soldiers, heavily armored targets, and automated turrets.

Poison Gas Grenade (hit "9")
Appearance: Cylindrical grenade with a skull-and-crossbones, yellow cloud
Capacity: 5

Sadly, the gas grenades are a weapon better used against human players than the AI. Most of the time enemies will just avoid the clouds, so they can be useful to block enemies, halt an advance, or kill dogs. When detonated, a gas grenade will release gas in a wide area for 30 seconds, then destroy itself. Explosives can be used to destroy the gas grenade prematurely.

Don't run into poison gas clouds. You will die.

Hallucinogenic Gas Grenade (hit "0")
Appearance: Featureless cylindrical grenade, green cloud
Capacity: 5

Similar to poison gas grenades, but instead of doing damage they prevent enemies and players from fighting. If you run into a green cloud, your screen will become distorted and your aim will swing wildly, but the effect will quickly wear off if you step out of the cloud.

Antipersonnel Mine (hit "-")
Appearance: Green disc
Capacity: 5

These are fairly unremarkable mines. Drop one on the ground and it will instantly arm and destroy anyone who steps on it, friend or foe alike. If you step on one, you'll have enough time to hear the arming sound but not enough time to save yourself. Thankfully, you can spot them on the ground and destroy them with explosives. They are required to defeat one boss; I suppose they can also be used for traps, but I've never used them in that capacity.

viii. Mounted Weapons

There are two varieties of mounted weapons in Iron Storm: machine guns and rocket launchers. Remember what I wrote above and holster your weapons and position yourself directly in front of the controls to use them. Neither have ammo limits or cooldown mechanics, so go nuts.

The following is a basic walkthrough that should be able to get you through the game. I don't give the location of every enemy and health kit, but I will give directions, suggest basic strategies, and give special attention to specific enemy types and bosses when they appear.

After the introductory cutscene that gives you your primary objective of infiltrating the factory in Wolfenberg and recovering the isolation case, hop up on the table in front of you to grab the shotgun. You don't need to talk to Capt. Cecile Newcastle (the lady with the drinking problem) or Col. Mitchell (the one-eyed silver fox); the only things they say will be repeated in comm transmissions. Check out the ICT, then head out the room and down the ladder. This area is a sort of friendly "tutorial" area to acclimatize yourself with the controls. The general layout of the area is akin to a digital figure "8" bisected vertically by isolation doors. The 3rd lines are on the left side of the "8" and contain a target range with machine pistols, an infirmary/triage center, a kennel, and a gondola wagon full of happy things. The 2nd lines are on the right of the "8" and contain a kitchen, two dormitories (one of which contains a sniper rifle), and two paths to the front lines, one of which will be collapsed by a bomb. Explore this whole area and pick up everything you can.

(Just before you depart, head back to the 3rd lines, get up on one of the catwalks, and look down your sniper scope at the circling helicopters overhead. What is that written on their tails?)

Once you're ready, head down the unbombed trench, through the airlock, and onto the battlefield. A USWE soldier will run ahead of you and make a right turn; you should follow him. He will lead you to two snipers you need to take out, which you can do with one through-and-through shot with your sniper rifle if you're positioned correctly. Once they're dead, follow the soldier down the trench, making sure to admire both the crashing helicopter above and the war crime to your left. You will get to a little cluster of soldiers waiting to advance onto a plateau. One of them will ask you to kill a sniper hiding near that trench to the left; head down the trench, kill the sniper and watch for ambushes. Head back to the platoon and carefully inch your way up to the plateau with your sniper rifle out; there's a sniper directly across from you and it's incredibly easy for him to snipe you out of your shoes. Once he's dead, the platoon will advance and a general fracas will begin.

Once things have calmed down, hop into the trench where the Russo-Mongols were holed up. Your current goal is to find a bunker hidden under a ruined church/chapel; thankfully, it's a straight shot and your path is marked out with signs. After walking through the tunnel you'll come to a T-intersection with an ICT in front of you. Hang a right and another right until you find a trio of unlucky USWE soldiers without weapons. They'll be ambushed as soon as you continue further along your path, so drop your assault rifle and shotgun on them if you're feeling generous. (In the original retail release of Iron Storm you could order friendly soldiers to follow you as in Half-Life, but I think that feature may have been patched out in the Steam release.) In any case, wander further down the trench to collect grenades from the ammo boxes and kill any nearby enemies. Once you've reached the end, head back to the T-intersection and take the left path.

From here, you'll encounter a mounted machine gun and then a sniper. A fleeing soldier will warn you about the sniper, so sneak up that earthen ramp on the left side of the trench and counter-snipe him. Head through the tunnel past the demolition crew until you hit another T-intersection, and hang a left for the church/chapel. (To the right there's a blocked-up path to a camp that wasn't finished in time for release.)

When you emerge, you will discover that a snowstorm has rolled through and that you are in the environs of the church/chapel. Take your first left, make note of a ramp up on your right, but keep going until you find a dugout with a machine gun inside. Use it to kill all the troops just outside the dugout, then start sniping everyone you can see. Once that's done, head back to the ramp up and keep sniping around the church and bunker. Clear out as much of the area as you can, and watch for snow blindness. Once you're satisfied the area is clear, retrace your steps back to where you entered the area and continue along the forward path. Eventually you'll come to a ditched tank half-stuck in the trench. Crawl under it, clear out the straggler in the trench beyond it, then return to the tank. Crawling out of the trench will trigger a wave of soldiers to come after you, so your best bet is to trigger them and lure them down into the trench where they'll be easier to deal with. Once they're dead, crawl up, snipe and shoot out the defenders in the bunker, walk to the ruins of the church/chapel, heal up, then drop down through the hole in the floor.

Down in the bunker, an alarm will sound when you first open fire, but it's no biggie. You will quickly come across another T-intersection. Turn left towards the banner; there's a room where you can turn off the alarm and a tunnel leading to another dugout where you defend some USWE soldiers with a machine gun. (This event is a remnant of the various secondary objectives that were never fully implemented.) Once you're done, head back to the T-intersection and take the other branch. You'll wind your way through tunnels until you emerge in an enemy camp. Continue down the path, making sure to make detours in the dugouts to your left to help out some other USWE troops and gather ammo. Eventually you will come to a steel-plated tunnel leading to an airlock; unfortunately the door is malfunctioning, an automated machine-gun turret is active, and there's a pile of dead people at your feet. Fortunately, there's a vent to your right you can crawl through to bypass the turret. Once you reach the end, destroy the grate, wait for the two soldiers to investigate, drop a grenade, then drop down when everything's super again.

Soon after you come to another T-intersection, both paths of which lead you to a camp. The left path has fewer enemies but leads you to the barrels of two mounted machine guns, while the right has more enemies and kennels, but will let you attack the camp from the side. Before you go, however, a word of caution.

There are dogs in this game. They are Dobermans, they are fast, and they are very dangerous. They come in two varieties: normal, which just bite you to death, and mined, which will explode when they either die or get near you. They can be hard to track with your mouse, so my recommendation is to toss a poison gas grenade where you suspect a dog pack is, wait for the gas to start seeping out, then walk forward to trigger the attack.

Proceed carefully along the right path, clearing out the defenders and the kennels. If a kennel has a mined dog in it, toss a regular grenade in front of it and run like hell. Once everyone's dead, you'll be able to open the kennels and gather supplies if you need them. Clean out the camp, then walk to the far end of the camp and toss a poison gas grenade down the trench beyond. There's a big pack of dogs down there, and you won't be able to fend them off with just weapons. Once they're dead, head down the trench and through another tunnel.

*BOSS FIGHT: Russo-Mongol Helicopter*

Helicopters are weird in this game. They are armed with machine guns and rockets, and while they are slow, they are also seemingly invulnerable to any weapon fire while on the move. To destroy them, you need to shoot at them with rockets or explosive shells while they are hovering.

Once you exit the tunnel, there is yet another T-intersection. The right path eventually leads to a collapsed bridge you need to cross, while the left leads to a camp with a rocket launcher. Either path will trigger the chopper, so head for the camp, kill everyone, grab the rocket launcher and some ammo, and play hide-and-seek with the chopper until you bring it down. Before you move on, however, you should decide whether to hold on to your rocket launcher or switch back to your previous weapon. Holding on to the rocket launcher will make the next parts tougher, but will make an upcoming boss fight much, much, easier.

Whatever you decide, cross the bridge by crawling across the crashed helicopter, fighting enemies as you go, until you head down into a catacomb that is filled to bursting with happiness. There are two ways out: a guarded path that is heavily mined to the right, and a collapsed tunnel in front of you that can be cleared with a grenade. My recommendation is to snipe out the guards at the top of the right path, then clear the collapsed tunnel, shoot the two officers who drop in, and proceed up from there and on your merry way. Continue through yet another tunnel, drop down at the point-of-no-return ladder guarded by two soldiers, and just keep on going.

At this point, you will emerge at the foot of a massive bunker complex you may have heard about in a earlier DRT broadcast. Continue down the trench, through the tiny camp, until you reach a massive steel door blocking your way. Yep, you're going to need some heavier firepower. Head back to that ramp up you spotted earlier and carefully clear the area out. There are snipers, dogs, and a mounted rocket launcher emplacement, so take your time and be careful. Once the area's clear, head for the emplacement and use it to blow open the bunker door (as well as an automated machine-gun turret if you feel like it).

*BOSS FIGHT - Siberian I*

There are three brothers from Siberia in the game, and they are the hardest of the hard lads. They wear heavy armor and are armed with VIVDA KSKs, and they can wipe the floor with you if you're not prepared. Their only vulnerabilities are sniper rounds, explosives, or poison gas (despite the fact they are wearing gas masks/closed-circuit rebreathers).

The first Siberian brother you will encounter is patrolling the hallways inside the bunker, and you have two ways of dealing with him. If you have the rocket launcher, you can play peek-a-boo with him and shoot him with rockets until he blows up. If you don't, you will have to play an arduous game of baiting him into pursing you while you snipe and toss grenades at him, all while trying to avoid getting blown up yourself. It's quite doable, but it's just so much faster with the rocket launcher. Once he's down, proceed through the bunker, killing and deactivating alarms as you go, until you reach the end with a mounted rocket launcher emplacement inside pointing out. The steel door blocking your path is illuminated by a red light, so just aim at that and shoot until the door explodes. (There was supposed to be an elaborate mechanism to fire a heavy shell at the door instead, but it was cut for time and money.)

Head back down into the trench and proceed through the hole in the door. There are mines scattered about in this little canyon, so hug the left wall and watch the ground for any little green hockey pucks. You'll eventually come across a dying USWE soldier who tells you that the camp just ahead has POW transports bound for Wolfenburg. Continue past him and you will soon see the entrance to the camp just beyond a ditched-out tank. This is also the first MANDATORY STEALTH SECTION of the game, and judging from comments I suspect this is the part where a lot of people got stuck and gave up on the game. Well, I'm here to say it's entirely doable with just a little effort.

The first thing you need to do is QUICKSAVE, IF NOT HARDSAVE, YOUR GAME. Then, switch into third-person view and walk up to that rock on the right side of the canyon. A patrol will be walking from the camp down the canyon, and you CANNOT let them see you, as they will alert the camp and make it impossible to sneak in. You need to hide from them by slipping between the rock and the canyon wall and going into a crawl (press "x") with your face facing the rock and your feet touching the farthest corner of the canyon. It will take a little trial and error, but you will be able to stay in one spot while the patrol passes you by.

Once they're gone, go into a crouch and crabwalk your way into the camp, hugging the left wall and avoiding the gaze of soldiers, watch towers, and searchlights. You will soon come across an unarmed USWE soldier who tells you to follow him; he will lead you through an underground tunnel to another opening into the camp with another USWE soldier. You'll be told to "get rid of those weapons on your back" and get in line with the other POWs waiting for transport. Discard both your heavy weapon and your sniper rifle, leave the tunnel, get in line, and hop into the halftrack when the soldier tells you to.

As a preliminary note, Wolfenberg is crawling with snipers. Assume every high window and gutted building has a sniper hiding in it, quicksave often, check your corners, and strongly consider sticking with a semi-automatic rifle instead of the assault rifle.

As the mission starts, a POW will give you a "key" and ask you to unlock the rear door of the halftrack you're all in. Do so, then go into a crawl and inch your way towards the boxes and ammo on the left and grab yourself a semi-automatic rifle. Turn around and crawl back to the other POWs until you all get spotted and chaos erupts. (Supposedly there's a way you can arm your compatriots and keep them around for more of the level, but I've never been able to get the timing right.) At any rate, hide behind the halftracks and pick off the soldiers one by one, making sure to deal with the snipers first. Once the dust has settled, go into the tavern the halftracks are parked in front of and scour the place for ammo and a sniper rifle. At some point some more soldiers should appear and try to make their way into the tavern, so pick them off as you see them.

Once you're stocked up, head outside to the road that runs right beside the tavern and turn so you are facing away from the tavern. The road branching off to your right is an optional path with a few enemies, a sniper, and reinforcements that will appear behind you. However, if you want a look at the place you will eventually need to go, snipe a few enemies there to make your job slightly easier, or gather some more supplies, take a look down this way. Just keep in mind that the abandoned building you can enter through the ground-level windows has active mines hidden under them, so toss a grenade in there first.

No matter what you decide, continue down the main road to the left and fend off the snipers and grenadiers until you see a usable wooden door. Beyond it lies a bunch of soldiers in fortified positions with mounted machine guns, so a little cunning is required. To the left of the door there's a gutted building with a collapsed beam that leads up to a hole in the wall on the second floor with a view of the whole area. Pick off everyone you can see through this hole, then hop back down and go through the door. There will still be one or two soldiers hiding by the door and one on the roof to the right, so be careful. Once they're dead, run over to the machine guns and hop on the one pointed at the door directly opposite of where you came in. Kill the reinforcements that come pouring through the door, heal and resupply, then go through the door yourself.

Once you're through the building and on the next road, quickly kill the two soldiers on your right, note the empty machine gun emplacement further on, then turn to your left and walk until you hit an intersection. If you look down to your left through a scope you'll see an officer giving a speech to a platoon of soldiers. You can carry on straight ahead and ignore them completely, but that would make an upcoming boss fight a bit more onerous. Instead, fire off a shot to get their attention, then run back to the machine gun and mow them down when they come around the corner. Once they're dead, head back straight down the road towards the ditched tank, then hang a left and descend into the sewer catacombs.

Continue down the sewer until you come to a T-intersection and hear two soldiers chatting on your left. Wait until they finish their conversation, then toss a grenade at them and back up to avoid the explosions. They're dead, but now you have a steam jet to shut off. (The area is also mined too, so there's no real way to dispose of them without rupturing the pipe.) Turn to your right and proceed to explore a series of sewer tunnels that form a rectangle. Pay close attention to the tunnel that has a bunch of explosive barrels, a group of soldiers carousing behind a stone wall, a window covered in chain-link fence that looks onto a valve bathed in dim green light, and a stack of boxes at the opposite end.

*BOSS FIGHT - Siberian II*

Yes, you have to get in there to shut off the steam. The best course of action is to equip your sniper rifle, hide behind the boxes so that you're looking down at the barrels. Shoot the barrel on the far right to break open the wall, and wait for the Siberian to come out before you snipe the barrel behind him. If that doesn't kill him, keep hitting him with sniper fire until he goes down, clear out all the enemies that have spawned in the tunnels, then snipe out the Kazakh with the VIVDA KSK behind the broken wall before going over to shut off the steam. (You can go upstairs, but it isn't worth it; it doesn't pay to sequence-break in this game. Also, just to clarify all the soldiers you see in gas masks and tan budenovka caps are described as "Kazakhs" in the game's manual. They're not any different from ordinary soldiers, but they have a distinctive look and they often have more dangerous weapons.)

Once that is done, head back to where the steam cut you off and climb a long ladder to find a room with three snipers. Shotgun them all, then very very quickly jump outside to kill the guy making a lot of noise just above you. Don't stick around, though; if you're not in the room, that tank in the town square will obliterate you. Once you're safely back inside, snipe everyone in the square and the wrecked buildings you can see, and destroy that barrel you can spy through a window to open a hole in the wall. Once all that's done, go all the way back until you're out of the sewers and looking at where that platoon of soldiers was. Go down that road and follow the twists and turns while picking off everyone hiding in watchtowers and upper floors.

*BOSS FIGHT - USIII Tank*

In due course, you'll find yourself facing a wrecked halftrack sitting in front of that town square you saw earlier, with the tank patrolling in a rough L-shape. The tank is invulnerable to small-arms fire, and while it doesn't have any machine guns, its main gun will make mincemeat out of you. The only thing that will stop it are antipersonnel mines, which you currently lack. On top of it all, there are still a few snipers hiding in the buildings around you.

First order of business is to take care of the snipers. You will certainly have to quicksave-quickload a few times just to get the timing right, but get them cleared out. Once they're dead, wait until the tank isn't looking at you and zip across to the wooden door to the far left of the wrecked halftrack. On the other side there is a camp, but proceed with caution. There are soldiers manning machine guns, soldiers hiding in the windows, and mines on the ground. Deal with the soldiers first, then inch forward and blast any mines with grenades to clear a path. You need to clear out the area around all the tents, then proceed up the road. Before you get too far, spin around and whip a poison grenade or two at the tents to whittle down the group of soldiers and dogs that sneak up behind you. Once they're gone, head into the door surrounded by Russo-Mongol banners and grab some mines from the supply lockers. (You can also proceed through the room to get some more ammo and health, but a soldier on the roof shoots and throws hallucinogenic grenades at you, and it's really just a pain.

Make your way back to the door through the path you cleared, quickly slipping in and out until the tank is not in a position to immediately open fire on you. When you have a free moment, zip to the front of the tank and start laying mines directly where its tread will be running. You can try to be more strategic by planting and hiding, but again, it's too finicky and risk-prone to be worth the hassle. Once the tank has run over three mines it will be disabled (and damage you significantly in the process), so you must run to the back of the tank and man the turret to fend off the squad of VIVDA KSK-wielding soldiers that will come pouring out of a street you haven't explored yet. Once those soldiers are dead, blast apart the tavern to kill any soldiers there, blast the town hall to kill any snipers you missed and find some more supplies, blast the statue because you can, and blast where any remaining snipers are hiding. Once everybody's dead, get out of the tank and head down the road those soldiers came down, watching out for snipers as you go. You'll eventually come to a firefight between some Russo-Mongol soldiers and two mysterious gentlemen. If either gentleman survives they'll turn on you, so wait for the two parties to wipe each other out and mop up the survivors. Make sure to pick up the weapons dropped by the gentlemen; they're very good.

*BOSS FIGHT - Russo-Mongol Tank*

Eventually you will soon come to two massive guard towers protected by an intact version of all those ditched tanks you've been seeing. Don't bother trying to fight it head-on; not only does it have a powerful cannon, it also has smaller guns that fire explosive shells and give it near-360° coverage. To destroy it, you'll need your wrecked US-III tank and yourself as bait. Start teasing the tank into following you, making sure to zip behind corners before it opens fire. Since the tank will get bored and return to its post if you hide for too long, try to stay out in the open until the tank has started to turn into the next bend in the road, then zip behind a corner and repeat the process, making sure to keep a couple blocks between you and the tank. When the tank has finally started to turn onto the road leading to the town square, run like hell for your tank, man the gun, and blast it before it gets a bead on you. Once it's dead, head back down to where the tank was guarding and clear out the towers. You can venture inside the one on the left for info and health, but doing so will cause soldiers to appear the way you came, so you'll need to get on the rocket turret to whittle them down.

Whatever you decide, jot down the road until you reach the end, then look in the building to the right for the happiest thing yet. Once you have regained your faith in mankind, crawl into the gutted building opposite it and quicksave the game. You need to get to where that last sniper was standing, so run along the beam so that you wind up on the second floor, then make your way around the holes and jump to where the sniper was. If you fall, reload the whole thing; it's much easier than finding a way back up. You'll find yourself in a set of concrete buildings surrounding a grassy square whose one free side is closed off by a set of heavy doors. Explore the buildings and eliminate everyone you see, until you find the controls for the doors on the second floor of the building opposite you. Open the doors and walk on through.

Before you go through the metal door beside the massive closed tunnel, look up at the watch tower. At this point it should be raining and thundering to all hell, so take out you sniper rifle and look inside the tower. While at this distance it appears empty, every strike of lightning will illuminate the silhouette of the sniper, so use it to catch him and kill him. Remember this.

After the sniper is dead, go through the door and down the corridor. When you hear the hissing of gas in front of you, turn around fast to kill the Kazakh sneaking up behind you with a VIVDA KSK before he can get a shot off. Kill everyone you meet on your way down the corridor until you get back outside, where you'll have a handful of soldiers and four silhouetted snipers to deal with. Finally you will reach the factory you were ordered to infiltrate, guarded by a picket force of guards with machine guns and one last sniper in silhouette. Follow the chain-link fence to a window where a Siberian is standing. He'll challenge you to a duel and saunter off, so hang a left and make your way inside the factory, making sure that your sniper rifle is topped off before you enter.

*BOSS FIGHT - Siberian III and troops*

Inside the factory appears deserted and in ruin, but stay on your toes. About half a dozen soldiers armed with explosive weapons are hiding at the opposite end of the factory. Try to draw them out with your new rifle's scope, grenades, or by running and hiding a lot. Once they're all dead, heal up and walk over to the elevator that's supposed to lead to a lab below the factory. Naturally, the door won't open, so another route is required.

Head back to the stairs in the center of the factory and use the button up top to reactivate the crane. Once it starts, the final Siberian will show his head. He'll run back and forth along the catwalk in a big circle, switching between his sniper rifle when he's far from you and his VIVDA KSK when he's up close. Dodge his shells, and just hit him with the sniper rifle until he goes down. Once he's dead, clamber up onto the roof of the catwalk to your left, climb up onto the crane when its counterweight is coming towards you and carefully walk to the end of the crane. Whenever it gets close to a catwalk, jump off, scavenge the two rooms upstairs for health, walk down to where the elevator is, jump on the roof, and climb down to the car below.

Wait for Cecile to finish talking to you and wait for the approaching soldiers to open the door.

Well, fission mailed, I guess.

Just to forestall several minutes of futile reloading, there is no way to avoid being captured. Your only option is to discard all your weapons in front of the officer (including each. individual. grenade.), advance to the center of the red square on the floor, and follow him into your cell. While he's talking, do make sure to take note of your surroundings, as you will be revisiting some of these rooms later.

All right, this is Iron Storm's only level where stealth is mandatory, so here are the ground rules.

1. You cannot ever let anyone press an alarm button. If they do, two invulnerable armed guards will appear and shoot you to death. To make matters worse, they will appear in most every important room with an alarm button, so you can't run like hell and hope for the best. The only places these two guards will not appear is in the cell room at the beginning of the game, the weapons research lab after the scientists have fled, and the silo room once you sabotage the facility.

2. Automated machine gun turrets can see and shoot you, but they are not tied into the alarm system. To bypass them, run under them when the guns are pointed away from you, and run ahead when they swing the other way.

3. If a door has a handprint lock, you cannot use it.

4. Always get backstabs, for they are instakills.

Once you are locked in your personal isolation cell, you will be hit with an unavoidable steam blast that will knock off half your health. Eventually another prisoner will start freaking out and make a break for it when the scientists come for him. In the confusion, a guard will shoot out the glass of your isolation cell. (In this build of the game, it's okay that the alarm in cell room is active. Feel free to turn it off if you don't trust it.) Run like hell towards the door near the control panel, down the stairs, to the left and straight until you reach an infirmary with a nurse inside. Grab the trench saber and health and kill her; if you spare her she'll run back to the cell room and trip the alarm again. Once you're done in there, head back out and take a look inside the laser testing room. You'll see a poor bastard get blown apart by a laser, an ICT informing you that nuclear material should not come into contact with the laser, a bunch of explosive barrels in front of a vent right next to the laser, and that the control panel for the laser in the testing room has been damaged and will not function.

Hmm...an idea is forming. We need to do some exploration.

Wait for a soldier to give the all-clear, then head back up to the cell room. Hack up the boards covering the trap door, then use it to drop into the trash room below. You will take damage every time you drop into the trash, so I am giving you a path that will only require you to drop down twice. Kill the custodian and the two dogs; you can make things a little easier by exploiting the level geometry and goading the dogs into sticking their noses through the chain-link fence that surrounds the trash pit and stabbing them through the fence. Once they're dead, open the door to lure two more dogs into the room and repeat the pattern. With any luck you shouldn't take much damage during this encounter.

Once everybody's dead, climb up on the boxes, go through the vent, climb up the ladder, and hang a right. Eventually you will get to a vent grate that looks onto a room filled with scientists and soldiers talking about important things. You should take a look in there, but this is not the way inside. Head back down to the trash room and go out the door and up the stairs until you reach an "elevator." Exit the "elevator", avoid the turrets, hang a right, and quicksave. That door to your right leads to a weapons research lab; there's good stuff in there, but you can't get in just yet. Continue on under another turret, enter the kennels, and stab the two scientists that have their backs turned to you. Slip into the sickbay, heal up, push the kennel's door release button, and crouch behind the privacy curtain with the other escapee. He will run away and get himself killed like a silly billy, and the dogs will run into the weapons research lab and set off the automated guns. Use the other door in the kennels to slip back out, avoid the turrets, take the elevator back down to the trash room and climb back through those vents to that grate I mentioned earlier. Pop it open, and take a look at the happiness-dispensing devices the Russo-Mongols are building. It doesn't matter that the alarm in this room is on, but feel free to turn it off. Smash the glass case and grab the nuclear material, then go back into the vents and crawl on back past the ladder until you find another grate to smash. This one leads to the room directly above the cell room, so smash one of those glass bubbles, drop down, run down the stairs to the testing room, and drop the nuclear material on the restraining bed. Now you need to turn it on.

Drop back down into the trash room and crawl through the vents until you're above the cell room again, then head out the usable door. Go down the hall and you'll find yourself in the storeroom you were marched through earlier. Rather than tangle with the two automated turrets, look for a vent grate hiding by the boxes to your left, smash it and hop in, crawl to the other end, then pop out and run to the door, making sure to move when the turrets aren't looking. Go down the hall, but stop a few meters before you enter the little break room.

Now you will come to the trickiest stealth section of the game. There's six scientists that need to die, and you don't really have decent places to dispatch them in peace. Still there is a workable method. Start with the two scientists chatting in the break room. Your goal is to prevent either of them from running into the laser control room you're heading for. Get down into a crawl and inch your way into the room while hiding behind the couches. Your goal is to get yourself between them and the corridor to the control room, but it's all right if they see you before that. In most cases, the man runs for the control room while the woman runs back to the store room, so be sure to kill him first.

Thankfully, the laser control room is slightly easier. If you take your time and walk around the room in a clockwise fashion, you should be able to overpower all four scientists. Start by waiting by the door until you hear someone walking to the left. Take a peek and you should hopefully see a scientist walking towards a table with a DRT on it. Sneak towards him and kill him while he's by that table and isn't looking at you. Crawl over the boxes and lie in wait for the scientist walking back and forth in the corner ahead. Once he's out of the picture, make your way to the next corner and position yourself so that the woman patrolling that part of the lab can't see you until she's on top of you. Scientists are slightly faster than you, so once she starts running for the alarm bunny-hop your way to her and kill her. Once she's down, the last scientist can be killed by just running up to him and stabbing him; you now have the advantage over him.

Once the room is clear, activate the laser, watch the barrels explode, and make your way back into the test chamber and go through the vent. While you're sneaking, take a quick look out the unbreakable grates to the right. You should see an immense loading bay with an armored train idling peacefully; remember that for later. Don't linger though; there's a jittery soldier somewhere in there with the eyes of a hawk that will just start shooting at you.

Continue through the vent, down the ladder, and you'll find another breakable vent leading to a tank room (the liquid-holding kind, not the shoot-at-you kind). There's only two scientists in the room, but keeping both of them from hitting the alarm is a trial. Just wait until one scientist walks right up to you then turns left before you pop out and stab him. Even though he's only three meters from an alarm button, he'll panic enough for you to overpower him. Once he's gone, run to the opposite side of the room, stab his buddy, and head out the door. After that, go straight, head up the stairs, and you should find yourself in another room of tanks. Evade or kill the two women inside, then head inside the tank with the open door and climb down to the waste pipe. This will take you right to the silo you need to sabotage, but the pipe has a stream of toxic waste running through it that will eat away at your health. You can avoid some damage by hugging the sides of the pipe, but you probably won't be able to make the journey unscathed. At any rate, jump into the pipe run on through. When you get to a choice between a wooden barricade and a slope downward, smash through the boards and keep on running. Once you see a ladder on your left, climb up, and you'll be looking at the silo room. Wait for the scientist on the right to be walking away from you before you jump down and stab him. Once he's down, run for the other guy and kill him too. Take the time to notice a hallway guarded by an automated turret, a control room with an unusable handle, and an ICT talking about a glass pipe at the bottom of the facility. Guess where you need to go.

Hop your way onto the pipes that lead to a platform with a ladder descending from it. Go down the ladder, cross to the platform on the opposite side, and go down that ladder. At the lowest level of the silo there are three soldiers and a scientist down there, but you don't have to be too stealthy. Wait until a soldier is separated from the rest of the group, stab him, grab his gun, and deal with everyone else on that floor. You are armed again! By the end of it you should have a saber, a machine pistol, and a choice of assault rifle or semi-automatic rifle. I would recommend the semi-automatic rifle just to make the next level easier.

Now you have a choice: do you break the glass pipe down here, or snipe it from the top floor? If you do the former, a soldier will spawn on each platform above you. They make things more inconvenient, but they can give you a little more ammo. Make your choice and get back into the control room and use that handle. An alarm will sound and soldiers will try to get into the control room and stop you, so just wait in the room with your back to the handle and shoot everyone who comes through the door. When the facility sounds a black alert, matters will have reached the point of no return and you will be free to move. Go outside, kill any remaining soldiers, turn off the alarm, and head down the turret-guarded corridor.

From here on out everything's pretty straightforward. With the alert all the turrets will power down, and you'll be able to replenish your arsenal. Kill everybody in the room, activate the bridge and head across. You'll be back in the corridors you just left, so head for the tank room upstairs and go through the door. Hang a left, then another left, then keep going all the way downstairs until you hit an elevator. Use it, leave it, walk through the station and you'll end up in the loading bay. To get on the train, make your way out of the boxes, circle to the left, and you should see a little control room. Use the lever to activate the moveable catwalk, then head up the nearby ladder and around the catwalk to find the two piles of boxes. Use one to hop onto the catwalk, shoot at the soldiers slowly trickling in, and that's the level.

You begin the level on top of an armored train rushing through the abandoned German countryside. Unfortunately, this train is protected by two helicopter gunships, so you need to find cover fast. A soldier will open a hatch and come after you; kill him, swap out your automatic pistol for his silenced one, and hop in and close the hatch. There's a soldier standing with his back to you as you come out the door, and three officers in a control room behind you that you can see through a glass window if you make two lefts after leaving the stairwell. Kill them all before they have a chance to hit an alarm.

Now, let's explain how the Tsar Ivan works. I think the developers wanted the players to use stealth for significant portions of the level, but the mechanics simply do not work. It really is not worth the effort to try and fail over and over again to sneak past the AI hivemind. Fortunately, automated machine gun turrets can be destroyed with sustained fire, and your standard rifles all have a generous ammo pool. Your general strategy for this level will be to enter a room, have a soldier trigger an alarm, kill all the soldiers you can see, then find a place where the sentry guns can't see you and whittle them down with your rifle until they explode and you have a safe path to get to the alarm button to deactivate the remaining turrets.

The second thing we need to cover is layout of the train. The Tsar Ivan is a big fat whale, and she has lot of different wagons. Every wagon has two floors dedicated to separate functions, though a few wagons have just one level. Just to break it down, the train is laid out as follows:

Rear-Defense Wagon and Anti-Air Defense->
(1) Sleeping Wagon, (2) Kitchen and Mess->
(1) Hospital Wagon, (2) Morgue->
(1) Sleeping Quarters, (2) Communications Wagon and Anti-Air Defense->
Chapel->
(1) Officer's Bar, (2) Commander's Office and Pool->
(1) HQ Wagon, (2) Diplomat's Quarters->
(1) Forward Defense Wagon, (2) Secure Room->
Locomotive

You, of course, start in the top floor of the rear defense wagon. For this level you have two objectives: destroy the two helicopters and recover the isolation case.

The first thing you can do is take care of one of those helicopters. Head through the door labelled "anti-air defense," go up the ladder, kill the soldier inside, and man the mounted rocket turret. A helicopter will start circling the train and shoot at you, but barring a lucky shot the train's armor will protect you. Shoot at the chopper when it swings into view, making sure to lead your shots, and it will go down in no time. There's another one outside, but that's a problem for later.

Head back into the rear defense wagon and take the lift to the lower level. Kill everyone in the room, shoot out the turret on the left of the room, then run over and deactivate the alarm in the little glass-fronted guard post up ahead. (A word of advice: you don't need to go upstairs in the next three wagons; it doesn't matter if you clear the wagons out, and you don't need more things to chip away at your health.) Continue on to the sleeping wagon, jump right into the bunk beds and shoot your way through until you find the alarm panel in the rec room next to the pool table. Once it's off, head on into the hospital wagon. Once you're in the hospital wagon, whip out your silenced pistol and start headshotting doctors before they can hit the alarm. If they do hit the alarm, you can turn it off in the little room just past the operating theater. There's also five large medkits in the room, so retreat back here if your health is taking a beating. Continue on to the communications wagon, and kill everyone in the little barracks before they hit the alarm button. Explore the rest of this area, making sure to collect some sniper rifles, but don't go upstairs just yet. There's another anti-air emplacement you need to use, but the room has four armed soldiers up there, so it's best to leave it alone for now.

Continue into the chapel wagon. There's a bunch of soldiers on the upper catwalk, including one with a grenade launcher, so play cautiously and make sure you kill him as soon as possible. Walk down to the little office, kill the officer inside, and the remaining helicopter will attack the train, knocking out the power and collapsing the umbilical between the chapel wagon and the rest of the train. Head upstairs, play the organ, and walk into the little room above where you came in. Go up the ladder and you'll be in a little pillbox/bell tower with a direct view to that anti-air emplacement I mentioned earlier. Snipe everyone inside, ring the bell, then head back to the ground floor.

To get to the front of the train, you need to run on top of it. Unfortunately, the only decent access to the roof is in the rear-defense wagon where you started the level. Isn't backtracking fun? In your absence, the surviving personnel in the rear cars have armed themselves and set up barricades, because nothing is ever easy. Gird your loins, head back to the communications wagon, head upstairs and up the ladder to man the rocket emplacement. Use the same strategy as before to destroy the second helicopter, and head back down to continue on to the rear of the train. When you re-enter the hospital wagon you'll find the way through has been blocked off, so take the stairs up to the morgue and use the lift to get back down and ambush the soldiers. When you enter the sleeping wagon, kill the soldiers just above you, then head up the stairs and take your first left to find a place to restock your grenades. (Make sure you refrain from using all your cluster grenades in this level. Keep at least two in your inventory at all times.) You can kill the soldiers in the kitchen/mess if you want, but it's not strictly necessary. Head back down to the first floor and continue on to the rear of the train, making sure to kill the grenade-launching soldiers first. Once you're back in the rear-defense wagon, go back to the hospital wagon if you need health, take the lift up to the second floor, hop into the stairwell and open the hatch.

Now that you're on the room of the train, there's only one way forward. Soldier on while picking off any other soldiers camped out between the gun turrets you find. Whenever you find a folded catwalk leading to the next wagon, take a leap just as the catwalk ends to get to the other side. (You may want to quicksave and practice a few times to get the timing down.) Eventually you will reach a pool in a glass-roofed room with three soldiers shooting at you. This is the officer's wagon, and it's your way forward.

Kill the soldiers, jump into the pool, take the health kit in the changing room if you're desperate, and step outside. You'll be looking at the train commander's office, and he'll be inside with an active automated turret. Kill him, then run under the turret to deactivate the alarm. You should also find a panel that controls the locks for the room the isolation case is stored in; you can open this one, but the other will have to wait for a moment. There are a lot of soldiers in the bar below, so creep slowly down the stairs and snipe at anyone you see ahead of you and to your right, making sure to avoid the active turrets. Once they're dead, run like hell down the stairs and hang a left to get into the room with the alarm panel before the guns chew you up too much. As you leave the room, a Kazakh with a VIVDA KSK will enter from the opposite side of the wagon, so kill him before he gets a shot off.

Head out to the HQ wagon, and you'll be hit with an immediate dilemma. Behind the door in front of you are three soldiers lying in wait, including one with a grenade launcher, and another active turret. The long hallway to your left is also guarded by an active turret at the far end. Probably the best way to deal with this is to play peek-a-boo with the soldiers through the door until they're dead, then go into a crawl and work your way down to the door without the turret spotting you. When the turret swings away, run for the door and deactivate the alarm. Head out and up the stairs to enter the diplomat's quarters. Kill the soldiers inside the lounge, then use the blue book in the bookcase next to the door to deactivate the alarm. The second lock for the isolation case's room is here in the diplomat's bedroom through that door. The diplomat himself is hiding in the bathroom through the other door; given that he's the only character in the game you can spare without it causing you trouble, you might as well do a good deed.

Head back downstairs and into the forward defense wagon. There's a little box maze with soldiers in every corner, so grab a shotgun and clear a path. Once you're out of the maze you have two turrets to deal with; hide behind the shelves to the right and shoot out the turret closest to the security office, then either run through the door or slither through the window to turn off the alarm. There's a health kit in the office, but I'd recommend against using it just yet.

Head out once more and enter the locomotive. The locomotive is something of a pain; there's tons of soldiers, including one with a grenade launcher, naturally, and the smoke makes it difficult to make anyone out. Try to conceal yourself and use gas grenades to keep the defenders off-balance, and feel free to throw in a cluster grenade if you can spare it. (There should be a few in an ammo crate near the front.) Thankfully for the driver, you can't get into his cabin, so go up the ladder and along the catwalk to go outside again. Go up the second ladder and hide yourself; there's another pillbox filled with soldiers. Snipe them out, return to the health kit in the forward defense wagon if you need it, then return outside and drop down into the pillbox and climb down the ladder to access the secure storage room.

Suffice to say, the secure room is very secure, with two soldiers on mounted machine guns in the rear corners, two automated turrets in the forward corners, and a heavy unbreakable cage around the isolation case. Shoot both soldiers, then carefully creep into the room so the turrets don't target you. Make a quicksave and toss a cluster grenade so that it bounces underneath a turret. It takes two cluster grenades to destroy a turret; if you only have two grenades, run under the destroyed turret and shoot out the other one. Make sure to only throw your second grenade after all the clusters in the first one explode; munition fratricide is an unfortunate reality in this game. Once the turrets are down, shoot the glass pipe over the door and the one on the ceiling behind the cage to raise it, and grab the isolation case. Finally, it's yours! Except...you don't have the key to unlock it, and any attempt to force the lock will cause the case to self-destruct. Hmm.

While you're pondering this conundrum, crawl on your belly under the steam through the door, and shoot the soldiers who rush you in the feet. Once you get back to the ladder, there's a cowering soldier who will spill the beans about the location of the case's key, and that's the end of the level.

This has been a hell of a mission, hasn't it? You started off with a simple order to infiltrate a factory and steal some samples, and now you're in Berlin, at the headquarters for the Russo-Mongolian Empire's western front operations, and you need to steal a magnetic key from one of the most powerful and well-guarded men on the planet and make it back home through enemy lines in one piece. Well, at very least your after-action report will make for interesting bedtime reading.

You start out in another cargo bay beside the Tsar Ivan (current complement: 1) with catwalks and hiding places everywhere. Slowly walk towards the rear of the room, picking off soldiers on the ground and snipers on the train and roof supports when they make themselves known. When you finally make it to all those containers and boxes in front of the control room, be on your guard. There's a Kazakh with a VIVDA KSK prowling around. Snipe him and shoot the rest of his friends, but don't forget to pick up both the ammo from his weapon and the only two VIVDA KSK ammo pickups in the game in the office; you'll need them later. (You should also drop your silenced pistol and grab a machine pistol if you haven't already; you'll need one for the work ahead.)

You may have noticed that there's a mounted machine gun far down by the Tsar Ivan opposite of where you started. It's an optional area, but if you go down there you'll be met by several waves of Russo-Mongolian troops you'll have to gun down. The only real reward you'll get for doing this is some sniper rifle ammunition and health you'll have to jump around on boxes to get, so unless you're really hurting for both it's not worth your time.

Whatever you decide, head up the stairs that are in front and to the left of the Tsar Ivan, and make your way out of the only door out of the room. You'll find yourself with a choice of either walking straight ahead or sneaking into a storage room to your right. Either is reasonable, but the second option makes things slightly easier, so let's go with that. Kill the two workers inside, and start hacking a tunnel through the crates with your saber until you find a breakable vent grate. Crawl on through to another sealed storage room with an explosive barrel inside; blow it up and drop down into the vent through the hole it makes. Crawl through to yet another storage room, pop out, kill the two soldiers inside, then head out through the door. Kill the soldiers in your immediate vicinity, then hop on the mounted machine gun and wait for the little party that will be coming to get you up ahead. Once they're dead, hang a left and keep walking until you see a door that will let you out of this concrete maze, then head up the stairs to this rustic little boiler room and kill the chatty soldiers inside. Heal up, then use the level and pass through the portcullis of no return.

You are now in the basement of the Reichstag, and some of those Call of Duty 1 flashbacks should be coming back. However, you might be not sure what exactly you're supposed to be doing at this point. I call the Reichstag in Iron Storm a "puzzle level." It's like those shooter levels where you're supposed to collect or activate a few things before you can proceed, but nothing is explained to you so you have to use trial and error. It's an interesting idea for a video game, but at this point I'm sure most of you reading this just want to get the game finished, so I'll shortcut some of this trial-and-error and get you on your way.

Your ultimate goal here is to get to Baron Ugenberg's quarters on the third floor and steal his magnetic key. Unfortunately, the third floor is essentially sealed off from the rest of the building, so a more circuitous route is required. First things first though; let's go upstairs.

Continue down the corridor and you will find yourself in the flooded basement of the Reichstag. Unfortunately all the water is electrified, so your exploration options are restricted for the moment. Turn to the left and jump over the narrow gap near the ICT to access it; you'll learn that power for the basement can be shut off on the second floor. Head through the doorway next to the ICT and down the corridor to find another flooded chamber; shimmy across the boards in front of you and turn left into the next corridor. You should emerge in a locker room with a few soldiers and a staircase leading up; make a note of the plaque that identifies the basement as the "-1" floor. You should also refrain from using the health kits; you'll be back down here later.

Head up the stairs and through the two sets of doors to reach some more barracks. Everyone will then swarm into the room to kill you, so kill everyone. To the left of the barracks is a room with some ammo and health, and in front of it is a hallway with elevator access. You use the elevator by pointing your reticule at the floor you want and hit "E" or "Enter." Before we continue, quicksave your game and visit both the 2nd and 3rd floors. Yeah, these are going to be problems.

Head up to the first floor and start clearing the area out. You'll want to turn left and move in a clockwise pattern, shooting enemies as you go. Be sure to clear out the little side rooms in the corners of the building; they have health and ammo. (They were also intended to be control rooms for automated turrets you could use against the Russo-Mongols, but they weren't finished in time for release and were boarded up instead.) When you've gone through half the floor, you should find a large room with a door labeled "versammlung" (meeting room?). Clear out the rest of the floor and return to this room once you're done. Go through the door and you'll find a sort of library/archive that's been converted into a camp. Once you kill someone, you'll discover that the room has been wired with explosives, and that the door behind you has been blocked off with rubble. You are on a timer, so kill everyone as quickly as you can, hop up on the boxes at the far right of the room to get to the walkway above, and make your way around the room to the door, making sure to avoid the gaping hole right in front of the door. Make your way through into another room, and with any luck you should be safe when the timer runs out and the room completely collapses. Fortunately, you don't need to go back in there. Even more fortunately, you're now on the second floor.

Go through the door on the right and continue down the hall until you find another door. Be careful going through this door; there are two snipers on either end of the hall. The best course of action is to gun down the soldier to your left, then run and hide behind the door he's using as cover, then use your sniper rifle to take out the soldier on the other end of the hall. Once he's dead, gather the ammo and find another door down the hall to your right. This one leads to a great two-level library with soldiers both on your floor and below you; you know the drill. During the carnage, take a look at that ammo stockpile below. It seems to have almost every weapon in the game. Once you're done, find the vent in the far left corner of the room and crawl on through.

At long last, you have found the Reichstag's generator room! Power down the generators for both the "-1" floor and the 2nd floor. That will keep the automated turrets on the second floor from killing you, but will also prevent the elevator doors from opening. Also note that the "0th" and 3rd floor cannot be powered down. Head out the door and you'll see the elevator door with a few explosive barrels in front of it. Blow them up, and you'll have elevator access to the second floor. Don't bother exploring beyond the door up ahead. There's a cranky Kazakh with a grenade launcher in there, but he won't bother you if you leave him be. Drop down into the elevator and ride it all the way up to the 4th floor. The roof is up there, and we haven't visited it yet. Maybe there's a way to the 3rd floor up there?

Well, that helicopter is going to be a problem. Hide in the elevator and ride it back down to the "0th" floor. We're going to need a projectile launcher of some sort, but the only ones we have access to are in that ammo dump in the library. We can get there, but it will be something of an expedition.

Retrace your steps back down to where you entered the basement, but when you hit the first flooded room, follow the sunken boxes though the corridor you didn't explore before. You should emerge in a room with two soldiers and something that looks like another elevator. It will be important soon, but we don't need it yet. Once the soldiers are dead, jump on the boxes to avoid the mined dog, and kill it when you have some cover. There are three more dogs in the flooded kennel ahead; bait them into coming to your boxes and repeat the process. Once they're dead, head down the corridor into the flooded kennels, hang a left to another corridor that will lead you to a flight of stairs that will lead you to a kitchen. Kill the cooks, then head left or right. The whole area is one big circle, and all that matters is getting yourself to a courtyard that has a little hayloft and a mounted machine gun in one corner. Once you've made it to that area and cleared it out, go through the doorway that sniper was skulking over and continue until you find a set of double doors.

Once you go through these doors, you will find yourself outside and in front of the Reichstag. However, the area is very dangerous, so you have to move fast. Kill the two soldiers just ahead that rush you, making sure to kill the one with the grenade launcher first. Once they're dead, shimmy to the left to kill the dog and soldier chilling out below you. Jump down to where they were, then climb up the two ladders and jump from the platform to the open window before one of the two tanks patrolling outside kills you. Once you're safe inside again, turn left and keep on walking until you find a room with a mounted rocket turret pointed outside and use it to disable both the tanks. Return back to the room with the window and go through the door you didn't use. After killing a dog, you'll find yourself in the bottom floor of that library with all the guns! Heal up and swap out your heavy weapon for either a rocket launcher or a VIVDA KSK. I'd suggest the VIVDA this time; it's not as powerful as the rocket launcher, but you should have enough ammo to make up for it. Now you have to retrace your steps all the way back to the Reichstag's main elevator. To get back to the double doors you came from, you need to drop down outside the window to the level below and creep back to the doors. You'll take damage in the fall, but it's unavoidable. You should also take a look at that big ugly ventilation shaft stuck to the front of the building. It looks like it reaches all the way from the ground to the roof.

*BOSS BATTLE - Russo-Mongol Helicopter*

Once you're back in the elevator, head up to the 4th floor and destroy the helicopter. Use the same strategies that you did for the first one; keep moving, use the giant metal tanks for cover, and shoot at it while it is stationary. When it goes down, another will fly up, so...

Oh. That was unexpected.

The Reichstag appears to have some unexpected guests, and they're not particularly friendly to either you or the Russo-Mongols. You may also have noticed that the roof is divided in half by an electric fence. Turning the fence off is a snap, but how will you get back up to the roof afterwards?

First things first, though. Head to the corner to the right of the elevator, climb up the ladder, and kill both the newcomer and the Russo-Mongol. Pick up the newcomer's rifle; you've seen it before, haven't you? Take a look across the roof and right in front of you there's a tank with a valve on top and a ladder leading up to it. Climb back down and take a look to the right; isn't that a door to the inside of the ventilation shaft you saw earlier? Go through the door and take a look down. Why, there's ladders leading all the way to the ground! Unfortunately there's a gas leak inside near the bottom, so what you need to do is go back to the roof, climb up to the top of the tank, and turn the gas off. Once that's done, head into the elevator and go back to the 2nd floor.

Once you're on the 2nd floor, turn to the right and return to the generator room. You'll find a newcomer inside. In fact, the newcomers seem to have infested the Reichstag and engaged the remaining defenders. Kill him, power down the 4th floor, and take the elevator down to the "0th" floor. From here, retrace your steps back to the basement room with the elevator inside it, engaging newcomers as you go. If you get lost and wander around the basement for a while, you should find two newcomers talking in...American-accented English? Very curious indeed. Once you find the elevator again, take it up and head outside.

You should find yourself in front of the Reichstag again, on the opposite side from where you emerged the first time. A pitched battle should be raging between the Russo-Mongol defenders and the newcomers; engage at your discretion and proceed to the ventilation shaft, go inside and climb back to the roof. Climb up the ladder to the top of the electrified fence, and jump down to the other side. Feel free to explore and kill the other newcomers, and also take note of that name on the tail of the helicopter. Where have you seen that before? Once you're ready, walk around the wooden fence until you see a gap in front of some wooden boxes. Climb up on the boxes, look down, blow up the explosive barrel, then hop down. Congratulations! You've finally made it to the 3rd floor! Go through the hole, heal up, and head on through the next two doors.

You have a choice of heading left or right, but since you'll need to head right anyway, let's go there first. Toss a poison grenade at that unmanned mounted machine gun and keep on walking to trigger a horde of newcomers. Avoid their grenades and clean them out. Once you're done, head into the control room to the right to start a cutscene.

Huh. Well...nice to know everything was for nothing, I guess.

At this point, the only thing you have left to do is escape the Reichstag, and there's only one way to do it. Tap the button on the control panel to open the door and head on through. If you want to see what was down the hall to the left of where you came in, feel free to check it out. You'll find a few newcomers, a news studio, a camera with a button on it that doesn't seem to do anything, and confirmation that, yes, they did shoot the newsreader lady from the DRT.

Continuing on from the unlocked door, you should just follow the hallway, murdering newcomers as you go, until you find a metal door on the right side of the hall. Head on through, and you'll find Baron Ugenberg's bedroom to the left (along with his...er, former mistress), his meeting room to the right, and Ugenberg's Buddhist shrine straight ahead. The shrine is where you need to be.

*BOSS BATTLE - "Vaughn"*

"Vaughn" is never named in the game; the name comes from some unused audio files that can be found rummaging through the game's folders. Initially, it seems like this will be an imposing fight. There are three levels in the room covered by automated machine-gun turrets that will be reactivated if you try to disable them, and "Vaughn" harasses you with both a special-forces assault rifle and a sniper rifle while running around you on the second level. However, he's actually pretty easy. Stay where you are, wait for him to come to you, nail him with rifle and sniper fire and he'll go down soon enough. Once he dies, a soldier will rush out of a little room at the foot of the Buddha and come after you. Gun him down, then hop in the room and deactivate the alarm. Heal up if you need to, then head up the stairs on the right side of the room to the third level and push the button in the near-right corner to unlock the exit. (The alarm reactivates for some dumb reason, so tap the alarm button next before you move.) Head back down to the second level, go through the unlocked door, climb and jump across gaps to get outside, and that's all she wrote. (There was supposed to be a final final boss fight with a mech on the roof of the Reichstag, but like so much else it was cut.)

While Iron Storm has a crackerjack premise, the game doesn't use its alternate world to its fullest potential. Indeed, just from playing the game very little about is revealed about this alternate world. The boxed retail edition of the game rectified this with The Scout, a leaflet done up in the style of a USWE trench newspaper. While I'm not certain of the legality of posting scans of this leaflet, what I can provide is a condensed timeline of the game's alternate history printed in the leaflet, along with a few amendments from the manual.

Condensed Timeline of Iron Storm

June 28, 1914: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Successive declarations of war pit the central European empires against the Franco-British-Russian Entente.

1921: Foundation of provisional trans-Baikal government. In Russia, Baron Ugenberg, allied with the Japanese, overthrows the Bolshevik government.

1922: James Anderson is born.

1925: In the secret Rio de Janeiro memorandum, France, Britain, Italy, and the United States decide to quote western armies on the stock exchange. The Russo-Mongolian Empire follow suit shortly afterwards.

1928: Cecile Newcastle is born.

1929: The front line is drawn up along the Freidrich/Anton Denikin Line, cutting Germany in half.

1930s: The Kazakhs of central Asia rally behind Ugenberg's banner, forming the future core of the Russo-Mongol army's elite forces.

1933: Western Germany rallies the Entente: founding of the United States of Western Europe (USWE) and the creation of the second hi-tech stock exchange in eastern Africa - the future ITTAQ (International Technological Trade and Armies Quotation) in Addis Ababa. The largest corporations quoted on the ITTAQ organize themselves into an alliance called the ITTAQ Survey and Investment Consortium, or ISIC.

1941: Secretly allied with Emperor Hirohito, Baron Ugenberg attacks China.

1945: Atom bomb invented in the United States. It remains a secret and is not quoted on the stock exchange.

1949: The Bolshevik resistance opens up a new front in western Siberia.

June 6, 1954: The Americans land on the Baltic coast of the Russo-Mongolian Empire and open a front to the north.

1955: Japan invades Manchuria.

1957: The Great Depression begins.

1963: The Western I-Spy satellite records a suspicious explosion in the Gobi Desert. The possibility of the Eastern Bloc possessing an nuclear bomb raises tensions worldwide.

March 7-13, 1964: A USWE raid on a factory in Wolfenberg fails, leading to several Western reverses in the sectors of the Freidrich Line surrounding the town.

(There is some dispute over the exact divergence in the timeline. The Scout implies a different outcome to the Russian Civil War, but an unpublished 2000AD comic adaptation of the game depicts Ugenberg seizing power in Russia during the 1905 revolution, and instigating the world war in 1914.)

If you're really struggling and just want to get through the game, you may be relieved to learn that cheat codes are available in Iron Storm. You don't need to do anything fancy to activate them; just hit "Esc" to bring up the pause menu, type the cheat on your keyboard, and hit "Esc" again to return to the game.

The cheats available for Iron Storm are as follows:

blindax - instantly replenishes all your ammunition and grenades to full

latounga - instantly restores your health to full
(please not that this is not godmode; you will still take damage as normal after using this cheat)

There is a third one called "supplies" which is supposed to give you a bunch of weapons, but as far as I can tell it isn't supported in the version of Iron Storm offered by Steam.

In closing, I would like to thank two people for inspiring this guide: MystiKnight[www.gamefaqs.com], who in 2003 wrote the first (and until now, only) online guide for Iron Storm, and Staggy3 on Youtube, whose video playthrough was invaluable while I was writing this guide.

-Rammelmeier15