Gamecuber gamers, there hasn't been a whole lot of good exclusive releases since Resident Evil 4 (if any), and Zelda got delayed. But, this is one of the occasions where you can pop RE4 out of your Gamecube, and play another great game. Batallion Wars feels like a more action oriented Advance Wars, you have COs chatting in the background, and you have plenty of stuff happening on screen. But, it doesn't play like Advance Wars at all. Instead you are the Commander of a Batallion instead of an entire army, and with this commander you can be one of several different unit types, ranging from grunts with standard rifles to veterans with mortar cannons. Also, you can hop into vehicles, like a fast-moving jeep, or a slow but powerful tank. Each of these vehicles can seem kind of odd to control at first, but you will get the hang of it, and even consider them fun to jump into. Also, as commander, you're charged with ordering your squad, you can tell them to defend, follow you, focus their attack on a certain enemy, and tell them to move wherever you want. There is also a flanking feature, but it is relatively weak and doesn't matter a whole lot. The missions are varied, from defending a base, to high-tailing it out of a base in a jeep, to capturing an enemy fort, there's a lot of variety. There is no multiplayer though, and I think there is a co-op would've been a great feature. There is also no feature like the War Room in Advance Wars, where you could just skirmish when you wanted. But you can go back on missions and do them over to get good gradings, and with the gradings you can unlock bonus missions. The graphics in Batallion Wars are just what you'd expect if you zoomed in on the action in Advance Wars, everything is oddly shaped, and it all looks cartoony. The landscape can seem kind of bare, and some of the models, and animations not too good, but there are almost never any slowdowns even when lots of things are happening onscreen. The sound is average. The voices of the COs bugged me a lot, and the general sound effects aren't too polished. The music is okay too, but in terms of sound, its not the best ever. The value is okay. You can play missions again for better grades, and unlocking the bonus missions, and at some points you can choose to do certain things. Like choose a path to take in a chase scene, or choose to resque POWs or not. Batallion Wars is enjoyable, though some departments are lacking, the gameplay works almost perfectly, and the graphics are beatiful and stylized. Also, if you are looking for the next good Gamecube exclusive title, this one is the one to pick up.
Battalion Wars was originally introduced under a different name as a spin-off of the GameBoy Advance's stellar Advance Wars series. It strays from its handheld roots, foregoing the tried-and-true, turn-based gameplay in ... Read Full Review
To begin with I know that this game is worth every penny. There is a lot of missions to vary from fighting on the ground as a tank or soldier, or flying through the air as a bomber or jet. There are only one problem with... Read Full Review
