D-Day 1597

In 1597, a tiny fleet under Admiral Yi-sun Sin fought off an attack by 133 Japanese warships in the Battle of Myeongnyang.

Given the vast difference in numbers, this must be one of the most extraordinary naval victories of all time.

I learned this from playing D-Day 1597, a game that seeks to recreate the battle on mobile. As a bit of a military history geek, I found it fascinating. And that's good, because it's about the only fascinating thing about this title.

With that subject matter, you might expect some kind of strategy game. In fact this is a simple shooter. That's not a bad thing.

There are lots of decent action games around with a military theme. What is a bad thing is that it's simplistic to the point of not being worth playing.

Your ship moves forward by itself, and you control its direction by tapping and holding on the left or right of the screen. Which would be fine, except that sometimes the game fails to respond to a tap.

That's bad enough. It's worse that one of the main enemy types are gunpowder ships that explode if you collide with them. You know, as a result of, say, the game failing to respond to your controls.

Amusingly, although running into some enemies is suicide, all the ships can bounce off the islands that litter the game screen like they're made of rubber.

You can gain a limited speed boost by hammering on a "row" button on the right hand side of the screen. Which would be a nice, thematic mechanic were it not for the fact that it occupies your right thumb, preventing you from turning right while you're doing it.

These are annoying oversights, but you learn to compensate with practice. What's rather more bizarre is that you have no control at all over when your ship fires on the enemy.

As you cruise around, a meter fills up. When it's full, you'll unleash a volley on the first enemy ship that comes in range. Then the meter beings to refill, and so on.

At first, I thought this was a pretty smart idea. It keeps the controls very simple. And there's more skill to it than first appears, because the game floods the screen with dummy ships.

So you do need to be careful, steer a course toward the right targets, and get the timing right to ensure you get off your shots and veer away before the enemy returns fire.

The trouble is that it leaves you with so little to do that it gets boring after about three levels.

Oh, there's lots of other stuff to look at. There are special powers to trigger, like a multi-directional storm of arrows or a typhoon that blows ships away from you.

You can upgrade your vessel from a simple one-gun junk to terrifying turtle ships capable of firing massive broadsides.

As you progress, you also get the chance to expand you fleet with extra ships. These follow your flagship around like sick puppies, lagging feebly behind while you forge ahead.

Then they get stuck on rocks, or blunder directly into the path of the enemy. They're not a lot of help.

There's also individual ship upgrades you can buy. Plus a multiplayer mode where your chances of victory depend entirely on how many ship upgrades you've got compared to your opponent.

But none of it can compensate for the basic, bland, uninteresting play at the heart of the game. Turn left, turn right, watch your ship fire. Lose and start over, win and embark on the next of the 280 identikit levels.