FA+
Shop
"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: Battleship
8 years ago
Continuing with regular DS.
Battleship
I know when you think of Battleship, you are immediately thinking of the board game. I’m sure I thought this at first as well, but this is instead a movie based game, based on the Battleship movie from a few years back. I didn’t watch that movie, seeing as I’m more of a gamer than a movie buff, but I think most people know the movie video game stereotype. Most people expect them to just be horrible. Well, I got this for cheap, so let’s see if this game falls into that same mentality or if it is one of those rare good movie based games.
Gameplay
The gameplay of battleship actually involves strategy and tactics and plays just like another game in the advance wars series. This means that you are basically on a large grid and you have different sized units that you move on that grid as they go around attacking other units trying to reduce HP to zero so the unit can be destroyed. However, there are definitely some differences between this game and the advance wars series, and not all of them are good differences. Missions usually involve destroying all units, surviving for a set number of turns before destroying all units or getting a certain unit to a set point on the map. The majority of them though are simple destroy all the enemies, which is not a bad thing of course. However, certain things that can be a problem though is that most, if not all missions, whatever units you start with, that’s all you get for that mission, and in many missions, the enemies units will constantly respawn unless you are continuing to move forward to try and end the mission quickly. Yeah, that’s quite an unfair thing when you have a set number of units, but the enemies units can constantly respawn. This isn’t in all missions, but it definitely makes certain missions way harder than they need to be. You do need to use some tactics in this game as you have to make choices on what units you want to send forward and what units you want to hang back. You need to choose what you repair, if you even can repair, and you need to know who to sacrifice if you need to get other units within range of targets. This is especially the case in many missions as most of the game plays through fog of war. Fog of war is the blackness that hides both your units and the enemy from view unless you are certain distances from each other. There are harbors you can take control of in some missions that will give you more units, but they normally only carry three or four units at most in the harbor. This means that once those units are used, that harbor is now useless. It’s not like other games where you can purchase more units, as what you have is what you get here. I guess this is more realistic in that you can’t just get infinite units from buildings like in advance wars, but it does make some missions harder if you lose your units to the enemy. Still, the missions in the main game are actually a challenge, but most of them are a healthy challenge in that as long as you use basic strategy and don’t act recklessly, you are going to have an alright time and end up getting through the game with little problem. However, there is one big problem that does hurt the gameplay, and that is the number of missions you can play. This will also be brought up again later, but there are only twenty six missions in this game in campaign mode. That’s no problem though as that is standard length for a strategy campaign mode in these types of games. However, while there is a skirmish mode, it is just the option to replay any mission from the campaign mode. There are no other missions to select from, so skirmish as a gameplay mode is almost worthless, unless you are just going for in game achievements and don’t want to play through all the campaign again to get to certain missions. The gameplay of this game is alright, as it does offer the standards that you expect from a grid based strategy game, however, there just seems to be nothing extra thrown in to add to the overall experience. Most other games like this usually have something added to it to make up for there not being a ton of different missions to play, but everything here just seems very standard. The gameplay isn’t something to wright home about, but at the same time, if you are looking for another strategy game to add to your arsenal, then you are going to be happy with the gameplay as it does play as you would expect, which is the good thing for sure.
Story
The story of battleship is that aliens have suddenly appeared around Hawaii and it is up to the navy to stop them from starting a full scale invasion of the planet. The aliens have launched communication blocks around the island, so the people in this area can’t contact outside help. It is now up to the navy officers that are in this area to work to stop these aliens from contacting outside help and to make sure they sink the aliens to the bottom and not end up on the bottom of the sea themselves. This is an alright story, and I have to agree that you don’t see stories about the navy fighting aliens like this every day, but there are some flaws for sure. While the officers you encounter on the navy side have fleshed out stories, personalities and have pretty good interactions with each other, but the aliens are a different story entirely. You learn next to nothing about why they are there, other than they need communications to bring on the invasion of the planet. None of the enemy officers have names, and really have no set personalities. Yes, they are different in that they have different occupation types with what kind of unit specialist they are, but that is it. It is like they put all their thoughts into the good guy’s stories and personalities but then forgot to add in the part about letting us know more about the bad guys we are fighting. Other than the aliens being there to just want to kill humans, we really don’t know at all why they are there or trying to invade the planet at all. I give the game credit for giving a story that is pretty good on the human side, but you need to give the players more information on the bad guys as well. They are just as important as the good guys when it comes to background information.
Graphics
The graphics in this game aren’t that impressive. While the ships look good, and the character models look okay, there is just nothing here that really pops. The models even then look sort of blurry at times, as you can tell this game is trying to push the 3D capabilities in some areas of the DS. However, the people that were in charge of doing this though didn’t take the time to do the fine polish is all. The units slide across the ocean fine, and don’t glitch around that much. There are even full 3D segments when you are attacking other units. These are very generic, which is understandable, but they are very slow to watch, so you are going to be skipping these like crazy. If you are going to do attack animations, don’t make them last ten and fifteen seconds, as no one is going to want to watch that for that long. However, one big thing that brings the graphics down is that there definitely is lag in this game. Moving around with the cursor on the map will slow down quite often, and there are many places where you will notice text boxes scrolling through slowly, and just areas where navigating a large map take time instead of being smooth scrolling through whatever is all happening on the map. The lag and slowdown is going to be something you notice often, and believe me, I noticed it a lot. It isn’t game breaking, but it is for sure going to bug you that you constantly have to deal with slow movement on the map due to this slowdown. It gets old very fast. I’m just glad it wasn’t to the point where the game was unplayable, but it will bug you for sure.
Sound
The sound is just honestly very forgettable in this game. It is so forgettable that you often times don’t even notice that there is even music playing at all in this game. The music is just so low that you almost just completely tune it out in favor of the sound effects. Even then, the sound effects are most of the time just the sound of ships in water and canon fire. Yeah, while those are done fine, that’s about all you are hearing, besides maybe some sounds between rounds. The in game what music there is, is just too soft for this kind of game and doesn’t have any sort of uniqueness at all. The music and sound is just overall, uninteresting, but not exactly horrible.
Control
Controls are fine for this game, but that isn’t saying much due to most of the game being simply navigating the grid for strategy and aiming with the stylus during first person duels between ships. You are simply pressing to move around the grid and then select what actions you want to happen. The only reason I gave this game any sort of hit during the controls is the lag issues I already explained about above. Navigating the grid can be slow at times and if the lag starts, getting around using the control pad becomes even more slow and tedious. Yes, you can poke on the touch screen to navigate faster around the larger maps, but you expect to just be able to use a de-pad in a game like this. This is especially so, when you are meant to select specific units and making them go to certain spots. That isn’t happening on the touch pad at all. It is more meant for very quick navigation across the map, and that is it.
Replay Value
I hit this game in the replay value for the reason I already explained above, and that is that there are only twenty six missions in this game, and no other scenarios, maps, or anything other than the maps in the campaign mode. I give some replay value, as the main story of the game lends itself well to a first play through and maybe another go through at other points in the future if you are looking for a strategy game fix, but other than that, there is nothing to retain the player for any period of time. Once you are done with the main campaign, you are just done, unless you want to unlock in game trophies. Even that doesn’t lend itself to the collectathon people, as there is no incentive to get these. They are just there to be there. Really, other than that strategy game fix need, I see no reason to come back to this game really.
Overall, Battleship looks good at first, because grid style tactics games are a good genre to play on the go on systems like this. I personally enjoy them, but I will say that the advance wars series, and the fire emblem series are likely better choices overall. While battleship has a neat story and controls just fine, with the gameplay being very limiting due to nothing extra being in the game to extend the games longevity, the game falls into the average territory. There are definitely some lackluster areas in this game, but the game made up for them enough to keep it out of the below average territory. If you are looking for a cheap option for on the go strategy, and you can’t get a hold of the advance wars or fire emblem series, I might would give this game a try. Otherwise, I would stick to the other two series I already mentioned above, they are definitely better options. This game is a nice little distraction, but it is defiantly not the star of the grid based strategy games by any means.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Battleship a six out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
Graphics: 5
Sound: 4
Control: 8
Replay Value: 4
Overall: 6
Battleship
I know when you think of Battleship, you are immediately thinking of the board game. I’m sure I thought this at first as well, but this is instead a movie based game, based on the Battleship movie from a few years back. I didn’t watch that movie, seeing as I’m more of a gamer than a movie buff, but I think most people know the movie video game stereotype. Most people expect them to just be horrible. Well, I got this for cheap, so let’s see if this game falls into that same mentality or if it is one of those rare good movie based games.
Gameplay
The gameplay of battleship actually involves strategy and tactics and plays just like another game in the advance wars series. This means that you are basically on a large grid and you have different sized units that you move on that grid as they go around attacking other units trying to reduce HP to zero so the unit can be destroyed. However, there are definitely some differences between this game and the advance wars series, and not all of them are good differences. Missions usually involve destroying all units, surviving for a set number of turns before destroying all units or getting a certain unit to a set point on the map. The majority of them though are simple destroy all the enemies, which is not a bad thing of course. However, certain things that can be a problem though is that most, if not all missions, whatever units you start with, that’s all you get for that mission, and in many missions, the enemies units will constantly respawn unless you are continuing to move forward to try and end the mission quickly. Yeah, that’s quite an unfair thing when you have a set number of units, but the enemies units can constantly respawn. This isn’t in all missions, but it definitely makes certain missions way harder than they need to be. You do need to use some tactics in this game as you have to make choices on what units you want to send forward and what units you want to hang back. You need to choose what you repair, if you even can repair, and you need to know who to sacrifice if you need to get other units within range of targets. This is especially the case in many missions as most of the game plays through fog of war. Fog of war is the blackness that hides both your units and the enemy from view unless you are certain distances from each other. There are harbors you can take control of in some missions that will give you more units, but they normally only carry three or four units at most in the harbor. This means that once those units are used, that harbor is now useless. It’s not like other games where you can purchase more units, as what you have is what you get here. I guess this is more realistic in that you can’t just get infinite units from buildings like in advance wars, but it does make some missions harder if you lose your units to the enemy. Still, the missions in the main game are actually a challenge, but most of them are a healthy challenge in that as long as you use basic strategy and don’t act recklessly, you are going to have an alright time and end up getting through the game with little problem. However, there is one big problem that does hurt the gameplay, and that is the number of missions you can play. This will also be brought up again later, but there are only twenty six missions in this game in campaign mode. That’s no problem though as that is standard length for a strategy campaign mode in these types of games. However, while there is a skirmish mode, it is just the option to replay any mission from the campaign mode. There are no other missions to select from, so skirmish as a gameplay mode is almost worthless, unless you are just going for in game achievements and don’t want to play through all the campaign again to get to certain missions. The gameplay of this game is alright, as it does offer the standards that you expect from a grid based strategy game, however, there just seems to be nothing extra thrown in to add to the overall experience. Most other games like this usually have something added to it to make up for there not being a ton of different missions to play, but everything here just seems very standard. The gameplay isn’t something to wright home about, but at the same time, if you are looking for another strategy game to add to your arsenal, then you are going to be happy with the gameplay as it does play as you would expect, which is the good thing for sure.
Story
The story of battleship is that aliens have suddenly appeared around Hawaii and it is up to the navy to stop them from starting a full scale invasion of the planet. The aliens have launched communication blocks around the island, so the people in this area can’t contact outside help. It is now up to the navy officers that are in this area to work to stop these aliens from contacting outside help and to make sure they sink the aliens to the bottom and not end up on the bottom of the sea themselves. This is an alright story, and I have to agree that you don’t see stories about the navy fighting aliens like this every day, but there are some flaws for sure. While the officers you encounter on the navy side have fleshed out stories, personalities and have pretty good interactions with each other, but the aliens are a different story entirely. You learn next to nothing about why they are there, other than they need communications to bring on the invasion of the planet. None of the enemy officers have names, and really have no set personalities. Yes, they are different in that they have different occupation types with what kind of unit specialist they are, but that is it. It is like they put all their thoughts into the good guy’s stories and personalities but then forgot to add in the part about letting us know more about the bad guys we are fighting. Other than the aliens being there to just want to kill humans, we really don’t know at all why they are there or trying to invade the planet at all. I give the game credit for giving a story that is pretty good on the human side, but you need to give the players more information on the bad guys as well. They are just as important as the good guys when it comes to background information.
Graphics
The graphics in this game aren’t that impressive. While the ships look good, and the character models look okay, there is just nothing here that really pops. The models even then look sort of blurry at times, as you can tell this game is trying to push the 3D capabilities in some areas of the DS. However, the people that were in charge of doing this though didn’t take the time to do the fine polish is all. The units slide across the ocean fine, and don’t glitch around that much. There are even full 3D segments when you are attacking other units. These are very generic, which is understandable, but they are very slow to watch, so you are going to be skipping these like crazy. If you are going to do attack animations, don’t make them last ten and fifteen seconds, as no one is going to want to watch that for that long. However, one big thing that brings the graphics down is that there definitely is lag in this game. Moving around with the cursor on the map will slow down quite often, and there are many places where you will notice text boxes scrolling through slowly, and just areas where navigating a large map take time instead of being smooth scrolling through whatever is all happening on the map. The lag and slowdown is going to be something you notice often, and believe me, I noticed it a lot. It isn’t game breaking, but it is for sure going to bug you that you constantly have to deal with slow movement on the map due to this slowdown. It gets old very fast. I’m just glad it wasn’t to the point where the game was unplayable, but it will bug you for sure.
Sound
The sound is just honestly very forgettable in this game. It is so forgettable that you often times don’t even notice that there is even music playing at all in this game. The music is just so low that you almost just completely tune it out in favor of the sound effects. Even then, the sound effects are most of the time just the sound of ships in water and canon fire. Yeah, while those are done fine, that’s about all you are hearing, besides maybe some sounds between rounds. The in game what music there is, is just too soft for this kind of game and doesn’t have any sort of uniqueness at all. The music and sound is just overall, uninteresting, but not exactly horrible.
Control
Controls are fine for this game, but that isn’t saying much due to most of the game being simply navigating the grid for strategy and aiming with the stylus during first person duels between ships. You are simply pressing to move around the grid and then select what actions you want to happen. The only reason I gave this game any sort of hit during the controls is the lag issues I already explained about above. Navigating the grid can be slow at times and if the lag starts, getting around using the control pad becomes even more slow and tedious. Yes, you can poke on the touch screen to navigate faster around the larger maps, but you expect to just be able to use a de-pad in a game like this. This is especially so, when you are meant to select specific units and making them go to certain spots. That isn’t happening on the touch pad at all. It is more meant for very quick navigation across the map, and that is it.
Replay Value
I hit this game in the replay value for the reason I already explained above, and that is that there are only twenty six missions in this game, and no other scenarios, maps, or anything other than the maps in the campaign mode. I give some replay value, as the main story of the game lends itself well to a first play through and maybe another go through at other points in the future if you are looking for a strategy game fix, but other than that, there is nothing to retain the player for any period of time. Once you are done with the main campaign, you are just done, unless you want to unlock in game trophies. Even that doesn’t lend itself to the collectathon people, as there is no incentive to get these. They are just there to be there. Really, other than that strategy game fix need, I see no reason to come back to this game really.
Overall, Battleship looks good at first, because grid style tactics games are a good genre to play on the go on systems like this. I personally enjoy them, but I will say that the advance wars series, and the fire emblem series are likely better choices overall. While battleship has a neat story and controls just fine, with the gameplay being very limiting due to nothing extra being in the game to extend the games longevity, the game falls into the average territory. There are definitely some lackluster areas in this game, but the game made up for them enough to keep it out of the below average territory. If you are looking for a cheap option for on the go strategy, and you can’t get a hold of the advance wars or fire emblem series, I might would give this game a try. Otherwise, I would stick to the other two series I already mentioned above, they are definitely better options. This game is a nice little distraction, but it is defiantly not the star of the grid based strategy games by any means.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Battleship a six out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
Graphics: 5
Sound: 4
Control: 8
Replay Value: 4
Overall: 6
