Video Game / Code Name: S.T.E.A.M

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Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. is a 2015 Nintendo 3DS game by Intelligent Systems (reputed for developing the Fire Emblem and Nintendo Wars series) and with involvement by Shigeru Miyamoto. The art and setting are inspired by American comic books (the styles of Jack Kirby, Bruce Timm and Mike Mignola were specifically highlighted), and the gameplay merges the Turn-Based Strategy genre with aspects of a Third-Person Shooter.

In an Alternate History where steampower has revolutionized society, President Abraham Lincoln has received evidence of an imminent invasion by beings from beyond our world. Faking his death to go underground, he forms S.T.E.A.M. (Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace), an international team of warriors to counter the threat. This team includes the likes of Henry Fleming, John Henry, the (not-so-)Cowardly Lion, Tiger Lily, Tom Sawyer, and other classic literary characters.

The game features amiibo support, allowing the player to summon Marth, Ike, Robin, and Lucina from the Fire Emblem series to join their team.

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The game's tropes include:

• Action Bomb: Crashers and, on a much bigger scale, Abominations. Bombugs are more Inaction Bombs since they try to run away from your team until their detonation.
• Action Girl: Of the four female S.T.E.A.M. members, Califia is by far the most fitting of this trope.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The initial cost for recovering the health and steam for squad members starts at 10 medals (for one) and 100 medals (for all) times the act number. The price for each following refill within the same act increases by 10 and 100, respectively. Fortunately, choosing one type of refill doesn't affect the price of the other, and the prices reset to a given base value (100, 200, or 300) at the start of each new act.
• Advancing Boss of Doom
  • The Abomination in Chapter 11 is a gigantic explosive alien virtually immune to most weapons. The aim of the mission is to keep it from reaching the Liberty for 10 turns.
  • In Chapter 14, the Abomination has to be destroyed before it closes in on A.B.E., which is digging into the Antarctic ground.
• Airborne Mook: Nettlers will teach you to look up in a hurry. Shrikes are much more visible but still qualify, as they are always airborne.
• Alien Invasion: The basic premise behind the game.
• Alternate History: Not outright stated but given the amount of "advancements in steam technology" has some inventions made earlier than their original time period. Other than that, Lincoln survived his own assassination.
• America Saves the Day: Downplayed. S.T.E.A.M. is assembled by President Lincoln, and the game opens with S.T.E.A.M. intervening to protect Great Britain, but S.T.E.A.M. as a whole is a surprisingly diverse organization (see Multinational Team below).
• Animal Motif
  • All S.T.E.A.M. agents have one by carrying an animal-themed weapon. The exception is Scarecrow, whose theme is a pumpkin instead.
  • Several other vehicles in the game have an animal motif, too, such as a Bison Tank or the horse-themed trains by Washington D.C.
• Anti Poop-Socking: After playing for about two straight hours, you'll be greeted by a message asking the player about taking a break from the action.
  "Break time? Can't save the world if you can't keep your eyes open!"
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Every projectile-based weapon has a limit to which they can be fired.
• Artificial Brilliance
  • The AI does not screw around with you. There is a reason that you should take advantage of the fact that the game will tell you if an enemy has spotted you - because they know how to flank, focus fire, and that grenades will knock targets back. Sometimes, they will even choose to act in a particular order so that a grenade will throw you into range of another enemy.
  • In addition, you know how you can save steam for an attack and interrupt your enemy's turn (sometimes stunning them in the process)? Well... the AI can — and will — do this.
• Artificial Stupidity
  • That said, the AI can still be cheesed into killing their own allies since they also have Friendly Fire. Invoked with Berserkers, who have intentionally poor AI to emphasise their stupidity. They'll even go so far as running up to and attacking Exploding Barrels.
  • Rippers are also prone to this. Their blindness will have them rushing toward any loud sounds they hear. As a side-effect, Rippers will often run into other aliens, causing damage to them on contact — possibly multiple times.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Each enemy has a glowing weak spot that results in doubled damage if it's hit. The Steam Crossbow in particular deals quadrupled damage if it hits a weak spot.
• Attack the Tail: The Crashers' weak point is the tips of their tails. Though they detonate after getting hit with anything, shooting the tail will have them drop bonus medals.
• Banana Peel: The output of the Bananapult, which provides the expected result whenever anyone — friend or foe — steps on one.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Abraham Lincoln is the leader of an alien defense force.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: How Slashers slash. How Hounds, Shrikes and Starface shoot. The entire tail of a Nettler is almost all stinger.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Averted for Marth, who finally speaks English.
  • Played straight in the Japanese version, where most characters still speak English, but the Fire Emblem characters are voiced in Japanese by their usual seiyuu.
  • The symbol on the Tin Man's chest? That's the kanji symbol for "heart".
• Blown Across the Room: A potent enough shot toward the aliens or the heroes will push them back one to two squares.
• Boom, Headshot!: The most efficient way for taking out Prowlers — especially when using Fox, since her rifle will frequently produce a One-Hit Kill.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Henry and Ike's Push ability, despite not being all that flashy compared to the other abilities agents have, is actually extremely useful for saving the steam of other agents by pushing them forward multiple spaces for free. Though calling it boring is a bit of a stretch, since while it's not "cool", Sparta-kicking your own allies in the face is definitely funny as all hell.
  • John and Califia's Break ability also works here, since breaking objects in their paths requires less steam to plow through them than it would to go around them.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Considering the weaponry available, the ammo doesn't seem to penetrate beyond the first target it hits with the exception of a few special attacks like Queequeg's Harpoon and Robin's Thoron.
• Bridge Bunny: Katherine.
• Can't Catch Up: Averted - characters in this game do not level up, S.T.E.A.M. is simply provided with more and sometimes better equipment, meaning that a character you benched a few maps ago will still be as useful as they were when you stopped using him/her. Maybe more useful.
• Cap:
  • Each steam pack has a finite steam capacity.
  • Deployable secondary weapons — such as the Bananapult, Mine Layer, and Sentry — have limits as to how many items they can have on the field at any time.
  • After completing each mission, the highest possible score (even after challenge multipliers) is 9,999.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Replaying a mission in any of the three challenge modes — Blind Eye (steam and health gauges are hidden from view), No Return (disables self-regenerating steam supply by back-stepping), and Merciless Mode (in which enemies do more damage) — removes save points entirely. You'll have to start from the beginning of the last stage in the mission that you've cleared so far in the challenge if you lose.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • Possible with the Stun Mortar, which has one of the lowest damage-per-ammo ratios in the game.
  • The Phoenix Rifle, which does one HP's worth of damage per hit, is even more suitable to this trope.
• Clarke's Third Law: There is magic in Oz, but the strike team doesn't encounter much of it. What they do see are a lot of machines that run on electricity, which might as well be magic to most agents, who are familiar with a world where steam power overtook electricity.
• Codename Title: The title group (the acronym stands for Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace) is a squad of literary characters like Tom Sawyer, Princess Tiger Lily, and The Cowardly Lion battling alien invaders.
• Collision Damage
  • Making physical contact with any Crasher causes this, as do the walls in 16-1 if not shot beforehand.
  • The tanks deployed by S.T.E.A.M. will cause damage to any creature it runs into... but they will also take some damage themselves.
• Combat Medic: Tiger Lily becomes eligible after completing Chapter 3, as well as any other S.T.E.A.M. member once medical subweapons become available.
• Combat Tentacles: These aliens are taken from Lovecraft HP's books, so you'd expect at least one of them to have these, which Devastators and Abominations do...the abomination's could just as easily be necks, though.
• Comic Books: The opening intro depicts Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. as a Historical Fantasy comic book or comic book series in the vein of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Composite Character:
  • The Fire Emblem characters are based on their appearances in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and take moveset cues both from Smash and from their canon appearances. For example, Ike's secondary weapon is Urvan, his father's axe that he inherits in Radiant Dawn after promoting to his vanguard class which can now use axes, and Lucina's secondary weapon is the legendary bow Nidhogg, as a reference both to the fact that she, like her father, can reclass to archer, and the Monster Hunter Frontier G crossover promotion where that bow and Falchion were added to the game along with costumes resembling Chrom and Lucina.
  • Scarecrow is a mix of the eponymous character with Jack Pumpkinhead from The Marvelous Land of Oz.
• Continuing is Painful
  • The only way to revive fallen allies is to use the "Save and Restore All" option at a save point, which costs a huge amount of Medals and can heavily hurt your end-of-chapter ranking. Save Points are also limited, so if any team members fall after using up your last save point, you can kiss that act's Full Squad bonus goodbye.
  • It's even worse if playing on the extra challenge modes. If any member is KO'ed during the battle, they're gone until either completing the map, until the whole team is defeated, or failing a mission-critical objective.
• Critical Hit: Shooting the glowing pink body part results in increased damage — especially if Dr. Carter and/or Robin is on the active team. As an added bonus, if that critical hit is the one that kills an alien, the enemy's corpse leaves bonus medals behind!
• Cyclops: Nettlers, though unlike the mythological beast they're based upon, are very tiny.
• Damage Discrimination: A... VER... TED! This game doesn't play any favorites as to who can injure whom. The Rippers serve as an excellent example: They're completely blind and have to rely on sound in order to approach a target. What often results is that a Ripper will plow through its own allies — sometimes more than once each — in order to attack the heroes. If there's a wall in their way, they're just going to run parallel to it.
• Deadly Walls: The walls in Mission 16-1 have bomb-like orbs in them, and will detonate upon coming in contact with any S.T.E.A.M. member.
• Death from Above: The potential result of being spotted by a Gunner or one of its Eyestalkers. The Starface boss has a nt so high up but still above you version as well.
• Degraded Boss: The Dreadnought is first introduced in the final map of level 13 as a boss, with the ability to summon enemy units to help it out. After that you start encountering it in pairs, making it more of an example of an Elite Mook.
• Demo Bonus: By playing the demo, players start with the Phoenix Rifle, as well as whatever medals you collected.
• Deployable Cover: The Starface boss raises walls of ice spikes to protect itself from your munitions. It can hit you from behind this cover by causes a rain of some sort of energy on you, but it can't see too clearly through its own cover, so you can still use it to sneak around.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Princess Ozma is in awe when S.T.E.A.M. not only challenges the Spawn of Cthulhu that holds her captive, but wins. and of course, all of the others they defeat.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man.
• Dual Boss: The Twin Generators in 16-1.
• Dumb Muscle: Berserkers.
• Early Game Hell: The first chapter has only Henry Fleming and John Henry against three maps of enemies that vastly outnumber them, with no sub weapons, let alone healing weapons. In fact you start out with no sub weapons whatsoever, meaning John Henry can't even overwatch. 2, which gives you more team members and access to healing, feels like a breather by comparison.
• Easter Egg: Using all four Fire Emblem amiibo characters on a level changes the background music of the map (as well as the title screen if you quicksave) to remixes of music from various Fire Emblem games.
• Eldritch Abomination: The aliens are explicitly stated to be Nintendo's take on H.P. Lovecraft's monsters. Fittingly, Randolph Carter (a recurring Lovecraft character) is said to be an expert on them.
  • Slashers and Crashers are (rather tiny) Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.
  • Hounds are Hounds of Tindalos (of course).
  • Prowlers are Deep Ones.
  • Rippers are Star Vampires.
  • Scourges are based on Chaugnar Faugn.
  • Shrikes are Byakhees.
  • Berserkers are Gugs.
  • Lurkers are Cthonians.
  • Starface are Elder Things.
  • Great Shugguth is a Shoggoth (of course).
  • Abominations are based on The Dunwich Horror.
  • Dreadnoughts are Star Spawns of Cthulhu.
• Energy Absorption:
  • Players can regain steam upon collecting steam tanks (often found in supply crates).
  • Tin Man's basic ability replenishes another member's steam supply (though it takes away from his own), and his special can replenish all S.T.E.A.M. members who are within a three-block radius.
  • The Steam Blaster, the one of the last unlockable sub-weapons, refills the steam of those who are within its blast radius.
• Escort Mission: Queen Victoria must be escorted out of her throne room in one of the early missions. Fortunately, the game will tell you which target she is following.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The aliens you fight are made out of ice, and areas they've attacked before are partially frozen.
• Exploding Barrels: In contrast to the kind that merely shatter when you shoot them, these tend to be marked with skulls and crossbones. They can also do more damage than most of your weapons.
• Extra Eyes: Crashers, Slashers, and Hounds have three eyes; Gunners have four; Lurkers have six along the circumference of their mouths.
• Eye Spy / Faceless Eye: Eyestalkers.
• Faking the Dead: Henry is surprised that Abraham Lincoln is alive. Lincoln responds that it was a ruse so he could go underground.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Chandeliers and ceiling fans (among other things) will fall a powerful enough shot. Bad news for whoever — or whatever — is standing beneath them.
• Flunky Boss: Queens and Dreadnoughts.
• Foreshadowing: This game was actually foreshadowed in Nintendo's E3 Digital Event via the Mii Fighter announcement for Super Smash Bros. When Sakurai showed off a bunch of mock title cards for Miis, one of them was a Mii Gunner based off of Abraham Lincoln. Cut to a few days later, and Nintendo shows off a game with team of gunners that Lincoln is in charge of.
• Friendly Fire: Applies to both the heroes and aliens.
• Fun with Acronyms: Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace. Also the Anthropomporphized Battle Engine.
• Girls with Guns: Dorothy, Califia, Tiger Lily, and the Fox.
• Goomba Stomp: Lion's Lion Launcher and Lucina's Parallel Falchion.
• Grenade Launcher:
  • John's personal weapon is the Bear Grenade Launcher.
  • Two unlockable secondary weapons are grenade launchers.
• Guest Fighter: The Fire Emblem characters don't participate in the plot at all, only functioning as battle units.
• Hand Blast: Dreadnoughts attack this way if they spot you in their range. If they can't use this on the source of their annoyance they let out a ring that damages everything around them, including other dreadnoughts.
• Healer Signs On Early: Zig-zagged with Tiger Lily. She's the fourth playable member of S.T.E.A.M, but by the standards of the trope, she actually joins fairly late: you have to go through the prologue two and a half full chapters (ten maps in total) before she joins, and the mission she joins in is a Wake-Up Call Boss. Played straight with the Medi-Carbine being the first sub-weapon you get.
• Healing Shiv: Some weapons heal instead of attacking. Tiger Lily has a Medi-Mortar by default, and the Medi-Carbine and Medi-Rifle can be used by anyone.
• Heroic Sacrifice: President Lincoln overloads A.B.E. in order to finish off the Final Boss before it destroys Earth.
• Historical Domain Character: Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria, John Milton Hay, and General Grant.
• Hit Points: All S.T.E.A.M. agents and the aliens that can be defeated have a health bar, though "boss" aliens have a question mark in place of the numbers everything else has to indicate how full they are, shots that hit them still show numbers being subtracted as it empties.
• Hold the Line: Chapters 11 and 14.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Friendly fire applies to enemies as well as you, meaning artillery aliens are very capable of killing themselves if they try to fire on units too close. It's even possible to get a boss to kill itself if you make it fire on units right behind it.
• Humongous Mecha: Abe drives a mecha version of himself named A.B.E., and even calls his attacks, shouting "EXECUTIVE DECISION!"
• Immune to Bullets: Another Devastator trait until a Gatling gun large enough to injure one is built.
• Indecisive Medium: It's based on comic books, so the cutscenes cut from one "panel" to another, have limited animation, and include speech bubbles and written-out sound effects. In a case of Painting the Medium, traveling from Earth to Oz is portrayed as the team's ship, the "Lady Liberty", jumping out of one set of panels and into another.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Lincoln Superpack. It boosts defense and offense by 30%, but only has a recharge rate of 8.
• Instant-Win Condition: Defeating the Abomination in Chapter 11 before the tenth turn takes place.
• Kick Them While They're Down: A viable strategy for attacking the aliens.
• Knockback: If a ranged attack is powerful enough, enemies and heroes can be shot backward a couple spaces. Getting hit by a Ripper or a Lurker guarantees this happening.
• Lethal Joke Item: The Phoenix Rifle only hits for 1 HP. Seems like a completely useless reward for playing the demo, right? Well, it only costs one steam to fire (three in overwatch), hits six times and provides knockback, essentially giving you early access to Tom Sawyer's Punch Gun equippable on any character.
• Level Goal: Conveniently marked in green.
• Lovecraft Country: Chapters 6 and 7 take place there. Chapter 6 in particular is set in a graveyard in Lovecraft Country.
• Lovecraft Lite: Sure, you're fighting Eldritch Abominations (their spawn and servants at first)... but you can also win against them (though it is suggested it will take a miracle if Shugguth, which is still in its resting place, gets involved).
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Queens defend themselves by stunning your agents with roars, as do generators. Starface can, although this is by far the weakest of its options.
• Malevolent Architecture: The aliens' lair in Chapter 16-1. Walls have eye-like creatures embedded in them, and they will explode when the come in contact with one of the heroes. Shooting these things, however, can be beneficial against enemies.
• The Medic:
  • Tiger Lily is the resident medic for S.T.E.A.M.
  • The aliens have a medic in the form of the elephantine Scourge.
• Missing Backblast: Califia can fire her Rhino Bomber with her back against the wall and show no signs of injury as a result. Possibly justified in that the Bomber uses steam pressure rather than chemical propellants to fire its munition and thus lacks the backblast that would be expected of such weapons.
• Monster Compendium: Every alien gets an entry in the library menu after you encounter them. Once Randolph joins, they each get a separate entry connecting them with specific figures from the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Mook Maker: All Queens, the first Dreadnought, and Starface.
• Multinational Team: This is one of Nintendo's most ethnically diverse groups ever made. You've got five Americans, a Native American, a Samoan, a Mexican, an ambiguously-African (from the mythical island of California), and three nonhumans from Oz (one of whom is portrayed as Japanese). Goes even further if you include the Fire Emblem cast.
• Multiple Head Case: Abominations either have multiple heads, or their limbs have eye spots...maybe both.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: No two members of S.T.E.A.M. can be equipped with the same weapon. Played even straighter with Stovepipe and the Fire Emblem fighters, since they have their own unique weapons and steam packs.
• Nested Mouths: Berserkers.
• Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: Overwatch, a system by which you can save steam and attack enemies on their own turn makes it extremely difficult to approach a gun user for melee, or even short-range gun, combat. Thankfully, the only character who's restricted to melee weapons, Marth, has an ability that makes him a No-Sell to overwatch attacks.
• Nintendo Hard: Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. does not screw around with you and immediately throws you into the action, outnumbering and outgunning you in every map. Even one wrong move in the first map can lead to you having to restart it. Oh, and you also can not simply outlevel your enemies like in many other games.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Played straight for all weapons except Lucina's Nidhogg, a bow and arrow set that visibly averts this.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Even if any S.T.E.A.M. member's health zeroes out during battle, they'll be available at full health for the next mission — or later in the same mission if revived at a save station.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Both Fox's rifle and the Steam Crossbow can do this against the weaker enemies.
  • Since Crashers have pitifully low health, they will always fall victim to this when hit once by most weapons (excluding the Phoenix Rifle).
  • Prowlers with their exposed cranial weak points are also subject to this.
• One Size Fits All
  • The Lincoln Superpack, which requires finding all 96 gears, is the only steam pack that all heroes can wear.
  • Also subverted, since Stovepipe and the Fire Emblem characters have their own steam packs.
• One-Steve Limit: Played with the name Henry, which is the first name of Henry Fleming and the last name of John Henry. Also referred to with John Milton Hay, who is called "Milton" — according to him, Lincoln said that there were too many "Johns" in his life.
• Overly-Long Tongue: A Devastator trait, which presumably has some practical purpose for them to risk waving about with their circular inward pointing toothy maw.
• Palette Swap: Only applies to Prowlers. Normal ones are gray, the stronger Commanders are purple, and the Stealth Prowlers have a semi-invisible skin.
• Permadeath: The Fire Emblem characters are unique in that they can't be revived at all if they fall in battle. The only way to bring them back is to scan their amiibo again.
• Politically Correct History: Despite taking place at the turn of the century, there's no sign of the era's casual racism. Tiger Lily is also described as a "Native American", rather than an "Indian" or some other era-appropriate term. Even stranger, towards the end of the game, if you go to talk to Lincoln in his quarters before the final battle, he'll explicitly state that slavery was recently abolished at that point in time, eliminating the possibility of the usual steampunk Hand Wave that in their alternate universe, society's values are more advanced just like the tech.
• Post-Final Boss: The Great Shugguth is fought by Lincoln while piloting A.B.E., and goes down in a few hits. Right before this, Starface serves as the final enemy that the agents of S.T.E.A.M. must defeat.
• Power-Up Letdown: Stealth Prowlers are, despite their name, more noticeable than other aliens, as they constantly shift colours in what seems like a ploy to draw your attention.
• Pre-existing Encounters: This may be a turn based CRPG, but it's a tactical one where navigation and combat are integrated, so there is no need for random encounters.
• Psycho Electric Eel: The Stun Mortar, once unlocked, fires these.
• Public Domain Canon Welding: The game features many literary characters such as Henry Fleming from The Red Badge of Courage, John Henry, Tiger Lily from Peter Pan, and Tom Sawyer; who team up with Abraham Lincoln to fight aliens (implied to be from the Cthulhu Mythos, especially since Randolph Carter is among the protagonists). The characters and setting of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in particular, plays a surprisingly large role in the plot.
• Public Domain Character: The entire playable cast (save the Fire Emblem Guest Fighters, of course) plus Queen Ozma is drawn from classic literature and folk tales. The exception is the Fox, who seems to be a Captain Ersatz of a literary character (Zorro) instead, and Stovepipe, who is on original character and a robot version of Historical Domain Character Lincoln.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The aliens' eyes are green when passive, yellow when looking for targets, and will turn red whenever they feel threatened. Most noticeable with the Eyestalkers; one giant eyeball is more easily noticed than several smaller ones on most of the other enemy species.
• Refuge in Audacity: A Steampunk game with comic book artstyles where a Massively Multiplayer Crossover featuring characters from works such as Peter Pan and Tom Sawyer? Yeah - the concept is just enough.
• Regenerating Health: The Medi-Pack replenishes 10% of its wearer's maximum health once the enemy's turn ends, but this perk is only available to John, Lion, Queequeg, and Califia.
• Respawning Enemies: They start popping up in limited supply in Chapter 1-2... but they start respawning ad infinitum as early as Chapter 1-3. There are also Lurkers who dwell below ground and the alien-producing Queens to deal with later on, too...
  • Then there's Chapter 12-1, where Shrikes and Stealth Prowlers spawn like there's no tomorrow...
• Rocket Jump: Using the Jump Booster can propel most members of S.T.E.A.M. onto ledges and over small walls, but the only output is a blast of air.
• Sand Worm: Lurkers.
• Save Scumming: With numerous save points put around the mission, especially ones where you are able to restore the health of a character or an entire squad, it seems Intelligent Systems knew of this tactic and incorporated it.
• Score Multiplier: Completing a mission grants the ability to replay it with additional challenges — hidden steam and health meters, no steam recovery, or fighting stronger enemies — for up to twice the medal count.
• Score Screen: Shown after completing each chapter.
• Scoring Points: Medals take the place of points, and they are calculated at the end of each full mission.
• Scratch Damage:
  • The Nettlers toy with this. Despite instant stun for most of the heroes, they will rarely do more than two hit points' worth of damage.
  • Also applies to later enemies who are capable of blocking their own purple weak points (such as Dreadnoughts).
• Sentry Gun: One of the last available weapons. This also works as a decoy, since aliens will often choose to attack it instead of the heroes.
• Sequel Hook: At the end of the game, the back of the comic book framing device announces a new story arc is coming.
• Shoot the Medic First: Scourges should be treated as high-priority targets due to their ability to heal their own allies.
• Shot in the Ass: Played straight for most enemies. The opposite is true of Hounds, Slashers, and Gunners, though; their rear ends are their weak spot.
• Shout-Out
  • The menu assistant is named Katherine, which is a reference to not only Nell but to Super Famicom Wars Caroline by that extension.
  • The first invaders the player can fight are alien tripods, albeit much smaller than the alien tripods.
  • When pulling out after the first four crew member mission, the agents can be seen shooting at the pursuing aliens from the Liberty, and written on one of the bullets is "ET GO HOME".
  • The game features an ensemble cast of historical figures and literary characters especially on the title team, much like in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Some Kind of Force Field: The barrier setup by the generator to keep The Liberty out of Washington.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: ZigZagged: The first alien Henry Fleming encounters is so though it shrugs off direct fire from a gunship and takes the Big Good's secret weapon to stop, although the first aliens he attempts to fight are thought by Milton to be the weakest of the invading forces they prove to be fairly dangerous later in the game when fighting in different terrain. Fleming's early retreats, the player's Early Game Hell and the consistently Nintendo Hard missions illustrate why this trope is usually played straight.
• Splash Damage: Results from explosions and the Stun Mortar, of all things.
• Status Line: Visible for all S.T.E.A.M. members and all aliens on all modes except when replaying missions in Blind Eye mode.
• Stationary Boss: The Gunner in Chapter 3-2, the Queens in Chapter 10, and all Generators.
• Steampunk: The game's setting takes place in an era of steampunk technology, although things such as wireless communicators exist and are said to be relatively new.
• Suddenly Voiced: Marth, for the first time ever (well, at least in a game), speaks audible English.
• Suspend Save: Quick-saved game files are deleted upon returning to action.
• Tank Goodness: A few of the missions have steam-powered tanks that can be boarded.
• Tele-Frag: Averted. You can position a member of S.T.E.A.M. on the very square that an enemy usually spawns from with no ill effect; either the enemy creature spawns one space away or, in rare cases, won't spawn until that space becomes unoccupied.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon, which both S.T.E.A.M. and the alien horde are racing toward in Chapter 9-2.
• Transforming Mecha: The A.B.E. can switch between an anthromorphic Humongous Mecha form and a steam locomotive engine form.
• Turn-Based Combat: But chess it's not, as it is not automated combat. Combatants still have to aim, can miss and can take shots during the opposition's turn.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Zig-zagged. The game will suddenly have you pilot the Humongous Mecha which is in real-time. However, the game does warn you before the map starts that it requires focus.
• Unique Enemy: Bombugs. They only appear in Chapter 13-1.
• Variable Mix: Each piece of player and enemy music has three levels of intensity.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can attack your team members in Campaign Mode. Doing this will usually prompt a What the Hell, Hero? moment from whoever you attacked.
• The Walls Have Eyes: Chapter 16-1 has eyelike protrusions on the ceiling that, much like chandeliers and ceiling fans in previous missions, can be shot to fall onto enemies. This time, however, they will automatically fall on any S.T.E.A.M. members who walk under them.

• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • As mentioned above, shooting your teammates will cause them to call you out for it.
  • If you fail the Escort Mission in Level 2-3 with Katherine as your guide, she will yell at you for failing to protect to Queen Victoria.
• Wind Is Green: Sometimes wind is white, or grey, or blue, but Tiger Lily's healing wind is green, and the "door" to Oz is a green tornado.

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