Game Reviews

Assault Wave

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| Assault Wave
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Assault Wave
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| Assault Wave

Assault Wave makes war simple. Whatever units you're using, whatever side you're playing, it's a game that only moves in straight lines. While that strips some of the tactics from the experience, it makes for a more frantic game too.

The battles here are bite-sized and desperate, and seizing the advantage at just the right moment can turn an almost certain defeat into an implausible but heroic victory.

A decent multiplayer mode rounds off a package that's not perfect, but features enough quick-fire violence that most carnage-junkies will be satisfied.

War! Huh?

The game is set during World War 2, and lets you choose to play as the Americans or the Germans. The aim is to score more battle points than the other side. You accrue these by destroying enemy units, holding scoring points, and crossing the battlefield to the enemy lines.

You have a deployment zone at the bottom of the screen into which you drag and drop your units. Each of these units has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they all behave in the same way. Once deployed they'll make their way up the screen, engaging anything they come into contact with.

You can attach buffs to your units as well to increase their speed or make their weapons stronger. You can even heal damaged units. But all of these abilities, and the vehicles and infantrymen you're deploying, have cool down times, so once you've used them you need to wait to use them again.

As the game goes on you'll get new powers and units, unlocking devastating air strikes and artillery bombardments, as well as ever more tooled-up tanks and soldiers.

Wavy

There are two multiplayer modes that let you duke it out with a friend on the same iPad or through Game Center. Here you have more control over your unit choices, although you can only use tanks and skills you've unlocked.

The simplicity of Assault Wave makes for some frantic encounters, and while there's a lack of longevity in the pile-in and pray gameplay, you'll be entertained for long enough to get your money's worth.

Assault Wave

Simple and stodgy, Assault Wave offers a good chunk of game, but it loses some of its flavour after a while
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.