Adnace wars - Buy it (Advance Wars (GBA))

Member Name: Tmstevens

Product:	Advance Wars (GBA)
Date:	25/11/05 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very indepth and addictive

Disadvantages: Gpaphics not amazing

Advance Wars is a joy to play, combining addictive gameplay with challenging AI. While there is still room for improvement in the next game, Advance Wars is a shining success and a ray of hope for strategy gamers on the go.

The concept is simple: take turns with the computer or a friend moving troops trying to eliminate your opponent. The beauty of it all is that the simplicity of the gameplay is only superficial; there is a lot of depth to this game. Throughout the various modes of play, players will have to consider the terrain and weather, along with the standard staple of which unit hurts whom the most. Terrain will provide various amounts of protection against your enemy, depending on the landscape. Poor weather will typically hamper movement, unless it happens to be your CO’s power.



COs will be calling the shots for each army, adding another layer of depth to the gameplay. Each CO has a unique power, which can easily turn the tide of a battle. Initially, you will have the CO Andy, who has the unique ability of partially healing his troops. This can be quite useful when going up against a CO with a power to hurt your troops. Of course, you are limited to amount of times you can use this power, usually only getting access to it every few turns of battle.


However, some of the game’s COs has more unique abilities, such as Sami’s troops can captures buildings faster than most armies. Capturing bases is an often effective way to end a battle if destroying all troops isn’t a viable option. Capturing simply involves moving a foot soldier onto the structure and selecting capture. But if that troop is hurt or moves, the process can be severely hampered, and even restarted all over again. Players who want raid an opponent’s base must secure a force to protect the troop, require additional tactics.

Either killing all troops or capturing bases will work in most battles, but there are quite a few fights that simply won’t require players to take such standard objectives. Some missions will require players to simply take out a certain unit, although that unit will probably not be easy to get to.

Yet another mission will require players to protect a certain unit of their own. It’s nice to see some variety throughout the campaign, and it helps to make each mission feel unique.

Another element that will play an important role in battles is the fog of war. The fog of war cloaks enemies that are out of the unit’s range of vision, allowing the enemy to move without giving away their position. Even more interesting is the ability to hide units in forests, requiring players to move a unit right next to the trees before revealing if an opponent is actually there. Not all of the game’s battles will take advantage of the fog of war, but most of the more challenging ones do, forcing even the most skilled players to exercise some caution.

Of course all of these elements can seem overwhelming to those starting a new campaign, which is why the game require new players to go through an extensive tutorial before even revealing the campaign option. The tutorial does an excellent job of explaining each element of the gameplay step by step, allowing for those new to the genre to grow accustomed to game’s mechanics. Even strategy game veterans will do well to breeze through the tutorial, as the game does have a few previously mentioned unique qualities. However, the tutorial missions can be a bit deceiving, providing an easy set of objectives. The actual campaign is much tougher than any of the tutorial missions.

The campaign runs you through various challenging missions, breaking the action occasionally with a short story sequence. The sequences are fairly well done, although nothing that great. It can basically be summed up as, “I’m going to fight you for so and so reason even though I know it may not be a legitimate reason.” Luckily, the game is not heavy on the storyline, so the simplicity of everything will not bog down what is an otherwise challenging, deep game.
Besides the campaign mode, the game offers players with some likeminded friends to play with each other. This is actually quite entertaining, providing strategy gamers with a very unique experience for gaming on the go. After playing several matches, I can easily say that this is the most lasting appeal of Advance Wars. Being able to strategically battle friends anywhere at anytime is a great feeling to have, especially when you keep mopping the floor with these aforementioned friends.

However, the game features a fairly unique mode called the War Room. The War Room allows players to fight on maps with various COs, including enemy COs from the campaign, in order to try to set new records. New maps and COs can be purchased in the Battle Maps option with battle tokens, a currency won by winning battle. The better you play a map, the more tokens you earn to buy new things. The system works well, and provides more incentive to play through the game multiple times.

Of course if you don’t like any of the maps up for sale, the game allows you to make your own. The game provides tools to build maps using all of the terrain, buildings, conditions, and units used in the game. The maps you can create are happily just as unique as the ones you play on within the campaign, making this option a joy to have. But most importantly, the construction of maps is simply a select and drop interface, allowing anyone to build challenging maps to fight on.

The game’s graphics do a good job of bringing the concept of fighting a war alive. When units attack, the game cuts into a battle sequence showing the two sets of units blasting away on their respective terrains. However, the game’s sprites are a bit small, and there really could have been more going on. The lack of animation of the actual maps leaves the game feeling somewhat like a board game than an actual battlefield. With larger sprites and more onscreen animation, the game could have had more aesthetic appeal.

The game’s sound fared slightly better, although not by much. The music that is there is very catchy, and left me humming it more than a few times. But, I wish there was more music. There were really only a few songs, which just isn’t right, even for a Game Boy Advance game. I know some more effort could have been put into this area. The sound effects, however, were very well done, giving an authentic feel to each clash between units. It’s nice to hear water swish when a unit moves across a river in combat.

After players complete the campaign, they can move onto an advanced campaign. Warning: this is hard, but infinitely rewarding. With tons of unlockables, two campaigns, a map builder, and the ability to play with friends, Advance Wars packs a lot of value. Even without most of that, the campaign is reason enough for strategy gamers to rejoice. This game is great, and shouldn’t be missed by strategy gamers. If you have ever wanted to try a strategy game, the extensive tutorial will walk you slowly through the ropes, making it a must buy for you too.
Now avalible in bargin bin^_^

Summary: How addictive it is