| Product: |
Advance Wars (GBA) |
| Date: |
16/05/08 (59 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Addictive turn based strategy game
Disadvantages: Can take a while to grasp
Introduction
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Advance Wars, is a game released in 2001 exclusively on the Gameboy Advance.
It is the first in a series of strategy, turn based, war games released by Nintendo.
The game is based around a fictional land named Macro land which is under threat from a destructive force known as the Black Hole. The Black Hole Army are led by the evil tyrant Sturmm, who through a series of mind games and sheer firepower proves to be a formidable enemy. In this game you initially play the role of Andy who is the Commanding officer (CO) of Orange Star, a peaceful nation who set out to liberate Macroland from evil invading forces. Macroland is split into many countries. Through a series of battles you must liberate each of these countries and rid Macroland of the Black Hole army.
Gameplay
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The aim of the game to win control of a country through a series of turn based regional battles, referred to as missions, against the enemy. Many of these missions can be won in one of two ways - eradicating all enemy units from the battlefield or capturing the enemy's base (covered later). There are some missions that can be completed in different way to these and have different objectives, such as destroy a gas pipe, survive and protect your camp for a specified period of time etc.
The play area is a battlefield terrain that is placed on an invisible grid. The terrain, which varies from mission to mission, is usually derived from a combination of grass, mountains, rivers, factories and headquarters. In some missions their can be fog, which severely limits the amount of terrain that an army can see and makes warfare campaigns tricky.
In each mission you are in charge of a minimum of one, in other missions more, commanding officers. Each commanding officer has a special strength, such as the power to create a damaging Tsunami, so selecting the correct CO for the chosen mission is imperative. The commanding officer is responsible for issuing instructions to the military units under his or her command.
There are 18 different types of military units available throughout the game, though not all at the outset. The military units are typical battlefield units including, but not limited to - foot soldiers, tanks, surveillance vehicles, helicopters and planes. Each unit can move a fixed amount of units per turn on the battlefield. In addition to this each unit has a cost, health level and some have attack capabilities.
The cost of the unit is the amount per turn that it costs to maintain and utilise the unit, items such as tanks will have a heavier cost than say a foot soldier. The cost is deducted from the player's war campaign finances.
Finances can be boosted by 'capturing cities' on the battle ground. This is done by moving a soldier onto a city on the map, symbolised by a house, and selecting capture. Dependent on the health value of the soldier the capture process will begin. This will take a minimum of 2 turns for a healthy soldier to complete and longer for others. If a soldier dies whilst in the capturing process then the city reverts to its previous state. Once a city is captured it adds monetary funds to your bank balance each day that passes. A captured city can also be used to boost the health level of a damaged unit. To do this you simply move the damaged unit onto a captured city and its health is gradually restored as each game play turn passes. The method of capture also applies to the capture of Factories and the capture of the enemies headquarters.
The capture of a factory, represented on the map as a slanted roofed building, allows the production, funds permitted, of new military units that are added to the battlefield on the player's subsequent turn. Capturing an enemies headquarters, represented on the map as a tall obelisk building, will win the mission.
Firepower is variable per unit and some units' firepower is specific to its target. For example, an anti air unit whilst effective at destroying planes has little use against a gunboat. Battle can commence when an oppositions target is within range of your selected attacking unit. On initiating attack, both units and their health levels are shown on screen, followed by a small animation of the attack. New units start with a health level of 10 points and this depletes according to the unit that it is engaged in battle with. If the health level falls to 0 then the unit is destroyed and removed from the battleground.
Each unit can be controlled once in a players turn, whether it is to attack, move or capture a city, factory or Headquarters. Once a player has moved all of his units then the opposition has their turn. Control is made by selecting a unit and moving it with the D - Pad.
Once both players have had their play, assuming has not been defeated, then a day is recorded as having passed and a new day commences. The day count is particularly valid in some of the missions where you are specifically asked to complete a campaign in a set amount of days.
On completion of a mission you are 'Ranked' on the speed and success of the mission and the country or reason is highlighted as complete on the Macroland map.
Playability
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Initially all of this may appear a bit confusing with the plethora of units, terrain variance and the Commanding Officers nuances at your control. However, similar to Chess, once you understand the principal of each unit's purpose within your selected army then the game soon becomes contagious in its playability.
The Artificial Intelligence of the opposing armies controlled by the Gameboy is pitched just about right. The difficulty starts relatively easy at start and allows you understand the concepts of play. Play does get more challenging as you progress through the missions, and almost impossible at the closing mission, as you would expect.
Conclusion
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In my opinion, the best strategy turn based game for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. Even as a Nintendo DS owner I would still recommend playing this game, and its three successors in the order they were released as each offers longevity and playability over a series of challenging missions.
© Otalgia 2008
Summary: Excellent turn based strategy game for Gameboy advanced
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