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Review  Advance Wars
- By Kevlar Gorilla
On several occasions, I found myself playing this game in the general public when an acquaintance of mine would ask what I was playing. “Advance Wars,” I said. They looked at me with a puzzled expression.
Evidently, it seems that few people know of this game’s existence despite its selling out in stores nationwide. So, it is now my privilege as NGenres’ new Senior Editor of Puzzles and Strategy to enlighten the nations about this oh-so fulfilling feast of a game.
The “Wars” Series has been a long tradition in Japan. In fact, it’s one of the only bunch of games that have been made for every Nintendo system so far. For some reason, though, it was never released in North America - until now. Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game that involves many degrees of tactics and some hefty thinking.
Gameplay:
The plot is simple enough to fit in four different armies (Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth). It’s nifty to see how the tale unfolds so every army is included in the larger conflict. Units in the armies vary from sea, land, and air. terrain varies from grass, roads, mountains, forests, cities, oceans, and reefs. Each unit and terrain has its own characteristics that dramatically affect the gameplay, but it all works to make a very balanced game. Every army has a Commanding Officer (CO) that affects the abilities of the armies and every CO has a special power that can be used to his or her advantage. To truly understand the mechanics of the game, you should play through the 16 training missions (which takes over five hours alone). The learning curve is a smooth, direct slope. You’re efforts are even graded via letters (D, C, B, A, and S for Super-riffic!). You are also judged in three areas: speed, power, and technique.
After training, there are many other things to do:
Campaign - go through the plot of the story. There are many different ways to take different routes and specific requirements must be met before you can unlock certain CO’s. At minimum, this is a 15 hour hike, the first time through, but variety presents itself in may ways.
Battle Maps - for every battle, you get coins. Use the coins to by maps for vs mode and the war room. Hatchi, the shop owner gives some very useful and humourous advice. Once, I had been playing for 5 hours straight and I visited him. He said that I should take a shower and wash my face, so I did.
War Room - buy maps. Play them here. Try to get a high score. Not just infinite replay value, many infinite replay values.
Vs. mode - more on that later.
Create-a-map - that’s right, build your own map and play with it too. Got an idea? Write it down.
Aesthetics:
Everything is shiny. All battle animations have character. Every different unit has a different look and feel for every different army. All animations are smooth. There is no slowdown. One surprising element is that on several occasions, I used a CO power in which every unit has an animated ring spin around them, and the screen, full of animations, stayed fluid as it zoomed to and fro over 50 units all over the map showing the animations. Most impressive. Kev likes it. Kev likes it very much.
Sound:
Every CO has a unique tune that can be described as “very intense thinking music”. Right off the bat, you can notice that the game uses the same MIDI scheme as Mario Kart. Every attack variation to every other unit has a distinct sound and feel. Even the sound of the troops’ movement can be identified from army to army.
Control:
A brings up a menu, selects units, accepts choices and the like.
B cancels and shows the attack range of any unit.
L selects the next active unit. This is very helpful since you will be managing over 30 units at one time.
R brings up intel of almost anything.
Start brings up the map while Select brings up a menu.
Really, all the controls are very responsive and work very well for the game.
Multiplayer:
Simple, time-consuming fun. You can either play with link cables and one pak, or you can just play “pass around the GBA” and socialize when it’s not your turn. If you lend your game to an acquaintance for a week and let him go through the training missions, he’ll be ready to battle you with enough skill to hold his own. The only downside to the multiplayer is that waiting for 3 other people to move. Also, it becomes painfully obvious when one side is going to lose so a game can hardly ever become officially finished.
OVERALL:
Fun for the whole family, and because it’s first-party, it’s cheaper than most other third-party games. You won’t be disappointed. You won’t be able to put it down. You won’t find a better game for quite some time. The formula for the game has been tried and tested for quite some time in Japan. It shows.
The Lowdown on  Advance Wars
| Aesthetics: Awesome |
Control: Awesome |
| Gameplay: Awesome |
Multiplayer: Very Good |
| Sound: Very Good |
Innovation: 5/6 |
| Lasting Appeal: 6/6 |
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Overall: Awesome!
"Top of the Genre"
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This game is:
Awesome
The Box Cover! Wow!
Intense nouvelle naval action
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IN A
NUTSHELL: |
| An advanced war for the advanced Gameboy in your advanced pocket. |
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