Battalion Wars 2 Hot

A few years back, Kuju Entertainment released Battalion Wars on the GameCube.  In it, players took control of the Frontier army, plagued by a teetering relationship with a neighboring force, the Tundran army.  The game introduced a clever blend of gameplay that could only be described as having an Action/Real-Time Strategy foundation.  Like with other RTS titles, the player was in charge of commanding the entire army—but rather than watching from above the theater in some invincible airborne position, you instead actually took control of a single unit (one of your choice) as you gave your orders to the rest of your army from the eyes of that particular unit.  Even more intriguing was the ability to switch from unit to unit on-the-fly, making the action quite frantic.

Perhaps too frantic, in fact.  Battalion Wars was met with a mixed critical reaction.  Many reviewers (including myself) felt that, while the game took a novel approach to the RTS formula, it was just too difficult to control your entire squad in three dimensions while trying to command all of the activities of a single unit simultaneously.  Other, smaller complaints also applied, such as the linearity of the missions and various control issues with the playable vehicles.  Having said that, it seems like the series would be a perfect fit for the Wii, which ideally should simplify gameplay with its motion-based aiming, helping to free up more buttons for use elsewhere.

Wii War I

As the first game in the Wars series to hit the Wii, the developers at Kuju had their hands full when it came to trying to implement motion controls without turning gameplay into an obstacle.  In many ways, they succeeded.  Despite dual analog’s continued reign amongst control schemes for modern action and adventure titles, foregoing dual analog control in 3-D games may be among the Wii’s greatest triumphs to date. BWii thankfully puts the Wii-mote to use for turning and looking (while the analog stick, of course, moves your character).  However, you really don’t aim with the analog stick—you simply lock on to a target to engage them.  Aiming is most often automatic thanks to the lock-on system; and this is probably for the better, considering the number of things you’re already burdened with when it comes to trying to control an entire army.

Speaking of which, when you want to switch between units, you simply tab over to the icon of your choice (listed horizontally along the bottom of the screen) and then hold the A button.  Alternatively, you can also lock onto a unit to switch to it, but that’s generally more trouble than it’s worth.  By pressing A at any time, you can toggle between having your troops either follow you or remain where they are.  And you can issue other orders, such as the order to attack or defend a target, by simply locking onto that target (friend or foe) and then pressing—yep, you got it—the A button.

So really, the controls are not all that complex.  Only once you get into the more advanced maneuvers do things begin to feel a little more contrived.  Jumping, for instance, is performed by flicking the nunchuk upward, while rotating it along its z-axis produces a rolling dodge.  Unit-specific maneuvers are generally pretty easy to grasp, such as tilting the nunchuk upward and downward to control the rising and falling in altitude of a gunship helicopter.  For the most part, while they do feel a bit loose at times, the controls are quite good.

War is Hell (and even worse with lackluster gameplay)

The game is divided into a few different campaigns (totaling twenty-one missions in all), with each campaign centering on a different nation as the protagonist.  The delightfully stereotypical portrayal of each nation’s culture does well to communicate BWii’s playful approach to the subject of war; too bad about the pretentious voice acting, because if it weren’t for that, the characters involved might seem a little less over-the-top.

Nevertheless, it’s the gameplay that counts… and although the controls are pretty cooperative, the gameplay is sometimes rather unmanageable.  The first few missions are a breeze, but the game’s difficulty quickly heats up—and not necessarily for the right reasons.  You see, I’m no stranger to Real-Time Strategy games myself (born and raised on the Command & Conquer series, yes indeed… I pledge allegiance to Frank Klepacki), but Battalion Wars 2 is one hectic game.  After much deliberation and many, many hours of play, I’ve come to the simple conclusion that there’s just too much to keep track of sometimes in this game.  It was the same way with Battalion Wars for GameCube, and not much has changed here, as quite frankly, that’s the name of the game.

But allow me to explain myself here.  With regard to most RTS games, the challenge is always in trying to handle the orchestration of an entire army all on your own—and that’s fine, because you’re provided with a supportive set of tools with which you can easily issue commands and logistically facilitate your troops.  In other words, when your base is attacked, you’re notified in several different ways—radar flashes, verbal warnings, and visual cues—and thus you’re able to quickly take action from your cozy seat above the battlefield, clicking and dragging to command your troops precisely and intuitively.  In fact, that’s arguably the most enticing aspect of the experience—that ability to easily perceive and respond to specific situations in a manner that resembles a complicated game of real-time chess.

But in Battalion Wars, the situation is different.  You’re not sitting above the battlefield and watching the action from a bird’s-eye perspective.  Instead, you’re on the battlefield, controlling a single unit of your choice in full 3-D, wholly responsible for that unit’s performance in battle.  Meanwhile, you’re still in charge of keeping track of what’s going on with the rest of your squad, and sometimes it isn’t easy to see where and why things are taking place.  It’s also not so easy to manage your troops; there are no boxes to be drawn or points to be clicked… instead, you must simply command your troops to either follow you or stay still, depending on the situation.  By singling out a certain category of units, you can divide them as necessary to, say, protect your infantry from enemy flame troopers, but it’s still much more challenging than simply selecting blocks of units and instantaneously guiding them to chosen locations on the battlefield.  In a word, it’s overwhelming.

Matters are made worse by the game’s unforgiving “wait/follow” system (as described earlier).  Although things generally work out, there are some scenarios (increasingly more of them as the game progresses) where only a perfect understanding of which units are following and which units are staying put will do—and Battalion Wars doesn’t do enough to communicate these things in rough situations.  For example, in one early mission, you’re asked to destroy four generators powering an electromagnetic barrier around the enemy.  Following a brief cut scene detailing your objective, control is automatically switched to a set of gunships high above the battlefield flying directly toward the generators.  However, those gunships are not the only things moving toward the generators—so are the rest of your ground troops if you previously had them set to follow.  In situations like this, it would have been nice to have some sort of audible warning, or at least a color-coded indicator of the troops’ current status.

Wi-Fi Warfare

Complaints about the gameplay aside, there are some attractive multiplayer options in BWii (all Wi-Fi-based—there is no split-screen).  Three main multiplayer modes are included.  In the simplest of the three, Skirmish, you simply square off against another player’s army in the arena of your choice.  Assault puts one player on offense and another on defense—generally working to protect some sort of home base or important structure.  And finally, co-op pits you and a friend (or random acquaintance) against a computer-controlled army in one of twelve different scenarios.  Skirmish is a bit messy—plagued by the same foundational issues that make the more complex single-player missions difficult (usually the “strategic” battles devolve into little more than chaos)—but the other two modes are a bit more captivating.  That’s primarily because you’re dealing with another human opponent in both of them, so both players are struggling with the same squad management challenges.

Although communication is very limited in these multiplayer games (as is traditional with Nintendo-published Wi-Fi games), it is possible for one player to press a button “request” assistance from the other one, after which the other player can choose to “accept” the request by pressing a button in response.  This provides for at least some degree of coordination, a necessary ingredient for cooperative play.  In the end, Wi-Fi multiplayer serves as a good break from the sometimes tiring single-player campaign.

War – It’s FAN-tastic

Well, not quite fantastic perhaps, but in spite of its shortcomings, Battalion Wars 2’s ambition counts for a lot.  It’s the first action/real-time strategy game for the Wii, and it’s also one of the only ones to date to provide genuine online play.  The presentation isn’t perfect, but aesthetically the game is attractive, and the soundtrack (while mostly forgettable) is certainly suitable to the atmosphere.  The single-player campaign is of adequate length—with fewer missions than the GameCube predecessor, but featuring considerably larger arenas and more complex missions.  If you’re the type of person who is adept at juggling lots of different tasks simultaneously under pressure, you might just find your niche in Battalion Wars 2 in spite of its occasionally distressing gameplay.  And if you’re hungry for a functional online experience, you owe BWii at least a rental.