Game Reviews

Battle Group 2

Star onStar onStar halfStar offStar off
|
iOS
| Battle Group 2
Get
Battle Group 2
|
iOS
| Battle Group 2

Battle Group 2 is a simple game. You play with one finger, tapping to fire missiles as your ships loll through the ocean waves.

It's fun in short bursts, but any extended amount of play reveals the slightly shaky foundations the game is built on. An over-reliance on IAPs makes the whole thing feel a little tawdry as well.

There's arcade entertainment to be had here, but it won't take you long to tire of the endless tapping and wander off to do do something else.

Battle slog

The game sees you controlling the guns of some ships. You tap on the screen to target an enemy and the game does the rest. You need to think cleverly though, aiming where the plane or helicopter you're trying to down is going to be, not where it is.

A secondary ship lets you use a turret weapon. This is on a pretty long cool-down though so you need to use it wisely. That usually means saving it for when you're surrounded.

Different enemies require more hits to destroy than others. Armoured helicopters take three rocket blasts, but nippy speedboats only need to be hit once.

You've got infinite ammo, but your ship takes a while to reload. You can add extra ammo slots to minimise that time, but these cost barrels of oil.

The oil is the game's currency, and once you've repaired any damage your ships have taken it's unlikely you'll have any left over to upgrade them.

You can spend it on extra power-ups as well. These freeze time, reload your secondary weapon, and blast an EMP that knocks out any missiles in the area.

Embattled

But everything feels weighted towards getting you to pay. You don't need the upgrades and the weapons, but they make the game that much more fun.

And after a while sailing around as a pretty bog-standard ship the game loses its edge. You're still just tapping away at planes and boats, and it's not as much fun as it was to start off with.

Battle Group 2 is entertaining for a bit, but it won't take you long to realise that a life at sea probably isn't for you.

Battle Group 2

There's a neat idea here, but Battle Group 2 doesn't add enough to that core to make it worth your 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.