Review: Rogue Planet

Game: Rogue Planet
Format: iPod/iPhone
Developer: Gameloft
Publisher: Gameloft

As a recent purchaser of an Ipod Touch, the most impressive thing I have found about this little device is the App Store. Being able to download hundreds of small, and more importantly cheap, games at the touch of a button is a huge step forward in my opinion. However there is a downside, and that is the popularity of the App Store; as any popular platform can tell you the more people there are buying your hardware, the more crappy rushed out titles there will be, as the PS2, DS, and Wii can attest. Glancing through the hundreds of games available, there appears to be a distinct lack of any real strategy games, and considering how well titles like Advance Wars have worked on the Nintendo DS, which also features touch screen controls, you would think that the Ipod would be the perfect platform for strategy games. It appears that Gameloft have noticed this gap in the market and are attempting to fill it with their latest title Rogue Planet.

The comparison to Advance Wars seems fairly fitting, as Gameloft have already established themselves as a talented developer that does like to borrow ideas from other developer’s games, with Advance Wars appearing to be their biggest influence this time round. The controls are perfectly simple; touch the unit you wish to command, and then touch where you want them to go. Each unit has a certain number of spaces they can move along the grid, much like chess pieces. If an enemy stands in their path you can tell your unit to attack, or commit suicide. At first I found the suicide attack pointless, but after getting further in to the single player I found that using it was a useful tactic if I had a weak unit that was surrounded by lots of enemies – the resulting blast damages every enemy in the surrounding area, which in some cases can cause massive damage. There are numerous types of units to control, such as tanks (the heavy duty fighters) engineers (the healers and repairers) and your basic soldiers. These controls are perfectly suited to the Ipod’s touch screen, and are very easy to pick up after a little practice.

There are a number of unit types available for you to command

In terms of single player experience, there is a fairly lengthy single player campaign. Between missions the story is told in a series of comic book style stills, and you often spend a lot of time navigating through menus to have conversations with the numerous crew mates on various parts of your space ship. While it is a good thing that they include a number of characters, who in general are well written enough to have their own distinctive voice, the constant shuffling between menus feels a little redundant at times. In terms of actual story, you control a team who returns to Earth after spending 35 years away from the planet on a mission, only to discover that earth has been taken over by robots. There are a large selection of mission types available, revolving around not only destroying your enemy, but claiming buildings, building units, and general exploration. The enemies you face are fairly intelligent, although they are not beyond making some bizarre choices that lead to their own downfall.

Combat is incredibly simple, yet there is great potential for tactical thinking

The missions in the story mode are fairly uneven in terms of length, ranging from as little as two minutes to nearly two hours. If the game actually had mid mission check points, or even the option to save your progress at any point then this would not really matter. As things stand, for a portable game on a hand held with a limited battery life, there would be nothing more frustrating that almost beating a lengthy level whilst on the train or bus, only to have your batteries die on you, meaning you’d have to do the whole thing again. For a portable game, it is not always portable friendly.

REVIEW ROUND UP:

GRAPHICS: 4/5 Brightly coloured, well designed characters, particularly in the cut scenes. The actual graphics for the battles are a little basic, but what do you really expect from a downloadable game?

SOUND: 3/5 Nothing spectacular, but competent. The main sound effects are explosions, so there is not really a lot you can do with that. The music is unobtrusive, but mostly forgettable.

GAMEPLAY: 4/5 Deceptively simple gameplay hides a surprisingly deep gaming experience. Being forced to move your entire team before the enemy can make their move means you have to consider every possible outcome. However, if you make a mistake, there is no cancel button, so once you select a course of action you are stuck with it.

LONGEVITY: 3/5 The single player missions vary drastically in length, with some of the early missions lasting a mere 5 minutes, while one mission in particular took over one and a half hours to complete. As of writing the game features no online multiplayer beyond games with friends on the same wi-fi network, although an update has apparently been promised to incorporate full online multiplayer at some point.

OVERALL: 3 exploding bridges out of 5 – Gameloft wear their influences on their sleeves once again in this deceptively simple strategy game that fills a gap in the market. The only real draw backs to this game is it’s uneven single player campaign, that seems to act as a simplified console game with little consideration given to the format that it is on.

[starreview tpl=16]

Tags: Advance Wars, gameloft, iphone, ipod, Mightyles, Review, rogue planet, strategy, touch

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