StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I fished Battalion Wars 2 out of the bargain bin earlier this week and have been playing it on-and-off for a few days now. It's a third-person shooter with RTS elements tacked on (or an RTS with action bits, though there isn't much strategy beyond "make sure you don't let infantry walk into flame-throwers").

Basically, each mission gives you a number of units and a couple of objectives to capture/liberate/destroy/clean/whatever. You directly control one unit under your command and order the others to hold, follow you, attack specific targets or guard installations. The game uses Advance Wars' rock-paper-scissors system for what unit works against what unit (simple stuff really: guys with bazookas rape armour, frigates can depth charge subs and shoot down choppers but won't even dent battleships, and so forth). Completing missions boils down to knowing when to order certain units to attack and taking direct control for jobs that need doing well.

And it's brilliant, brilliant fun. Sure, it's piss-easy, but it's never boring. You can switch to any unit or vehicle under your command, so there's always something fun to do; if you get bored gunning down infantry, you can switch to a tank and blow up MG nests, or switch to a fighter and provide air cover, or take over a sub and sneak up on a battleship.

The game's biggest fault is that, despite being easy, it also insists on holding your hand throughout. I'm 55% through according to my save file and I still get told what to do nearly every step of the way. It's getting better - the last two missions I just got updates about critical objectives I was about to fail - but nearly every mission in the first half of the game introduces some sort of new unit with a tutorial section.

And there's no skirmish mode. You get the single player campaign, and online multi, but as far as I can see there's no "quick match" option against the AI. Boo.

Thankfully the missions are set up pretty well. The last one I did was a kinda like a miniature WW2; all the factions in the game are parodies of real-world countries, and the third campaign has you playing as a spoof of WW2-era England. They get a mission where you start by defending an airbase against invasion in a fighter, then move through the countryside attacking enemy bases and freeing POW's. Its in missions like that one where the game gets into its rhythm; rolling a tank into a town after calling an airstrike and seeing the enemy's infantry disappear under a rain of bombs is great.

So, is anyone else playing this?

I've thought about getting it (it's not badly priced), but there's been a load of other things I've wanted first. My next Wii purchase will probably be MadWorld and/or The Conduit, when they come out.

It's something I would have liked my sisters to have got me for Christmas (because it's cheap, along with possibly No More Heroes) but sadly they'd already bought my present before they knew I'd have a Wii. :/

Such a shame they ruined such a cool concept, cool controls and cool vehicle design on such a shoddy, short-ass, no-fucking-maps game. If it was a PC game it'd have ten trillion fan maps (some with GOSH more than 5 points even) and be the best shit ever; on Wii it gets tiresome and old very, very fast. Which is a fucking shame because it's just so much fun to play. They designed awesome themed armies for everyone and then made you use them only in the smallest Battlefield maps ever with horribly restrictive unit use and heavily unbalanced 'I grabbed the odd point first I win' play.

But it looks SO FUCKING COOL. The control system is SEX ON LEGS. There just isn't enough content.

It's even weirder because, in the end, it's just Advance Wars 3D and those games are all about giving you oodles of maps (and a map editor) to goof around with. That's what makes the portable versions work, but then it jumps to consoles and you get 20 short missions.

About the points thing, is that online? I haven't tried multi yet.

Yeah, I never finished the five or six campaigns because they got boring. There are several online modes, one of which is like Battlefield with control points for unit spawn areas, and the maps being so small means it deteriorates into a rush and a swirling melee of inevitability... and there's only six maps for that mode. The co-op is another giant missed opportunity; you can work with another player to work through SP-style objective-based missions which is awesome fun and really shows the strength of the Advance Wars balance thingo... but there's like four missions. Bah. Everything IN the game is awesome, there just isn't ENOUGH.

And you can't even choose which factions to use on a map, for some reason. BAH!