Star Defence

While good strategy games are a welcome addition to anyone's mobile collection, the reasons we often find ourselves switching them off is their inherent complexity. But, knowing that dedicated persistence with a strategy-'em-up can unlock a treasure trove of glittering thrills makes that perseverance worthwhile.

Star Defence is another take of the popular 'tower defence' style of simplistic strategy games, much in the same vein as Tower Defense: Wrath of the Gods, though its rather lacklustre build-up and storyline fail to impose the same kind of purpose.

The warning signs are there from the outset. The instructions are poorly translated, and while it may be pedantic to chastise the developer for leaving out commas, apostrophes and even capital letters, the fact that you then can't work out what's going on when the game suddenly begins is a real problem.

'Suddenly' is probably the wrong word – perhaps 'when the game limps into non-action' would be more fitting. Anyway, the bewildered backstory revolves around a scuffle between two races called WGi and DCa (if you can't think of a name for your alien races, just jab the keyboard at random), leaving the Earth strapped for natural resources.

You take on the role of a commandant defending an orbital mining station from the space invaders. With a limited amount of resources, a semi-strategic defence force must be deployed along with suitable power facilities to run the machine guns.

The grammar might make you cringe, but once deciphered, the plot probably isn't any better or worse than most. How the events of that story are represented onscreen is a different matter, of course.

The attacking force (either the WGi or DCa – it's unclear which) trundle single file along the unchanging pathway, at the end of which lies your base. To begin your strategic defence, you must first build a power station, followed by as many stationary machine gun turrets along the roadside as you can afford. For reasons we're happy to accept, destroying an enemy gives you a bit of money, which can be put to good use for upgrading or replacing the defensive machinery.

A lack of variation in the available defensive systems (although upgrades to existing gun turrets are plentiful) removes the usual, carefully considered tactic of bulldozing existing defences (which can be costly, depending how much of an investment it represents), instead prompting you to litter the roadside with turret after turret. Once the defences are shoulder to shoulder along the single pathway, it becomes a simple and uninteresting task of returning to the beginning of the line and applying upgrades.

Nothing else ever really happens, and the lack of inventiveness that such a limited game concept as this demands gives you little reason to continue playing. It was only after quite a while passed that we realised the shallow depths of Star Defence don't actually deepen.

To top it all off, the sound effects are bloody awful (apart, perhaps, from the satisfyingly thunderous explosions), so be careful not to play it when wearing earphones – it's like being hit in the ear by a knitting needle as it scrapes past a blackboard.

The lack of inspiration turns Star Defence into a slow and uninspired spectator sport that actually only improves when boredom drives you to invent your own dictionary game, attempting to pick out the many syntactic errors littering the instructions.