Anyone even thinking about buying this should read this review first. (It's that bad, unfortunately)
Military madness is a turn based strategy game were your fighting on the moon with infantry, tanks, artillery, transport's and aircraft. (don't ask). For tank's you have light, medium and heavy with 2 units for each subclass. The 2 units in each sub-class are essentially the same the only difference is 1 unit might have slightly more armor, damage or move farther with less armor. (or less armor for more damage but you get the idea) Then you have a very heavy tank which is really slow and just all around nasty. The infantry only have 3 unit type's regular, heavy and motorcycles. About the only use for the reg infantry is capturing structures and getting killed. Even the heavy infantry which you would expect to be good at destroying vehicles and other infantry, but there pretty much only good vs other troops . The motorcycle moves farther than the reg infantry and can capture structures but die just as easy. Then you have the hit and run units that do a lot of damage but have little armor, but they're the only units that can move attack and then move again to get away. There's only 2 anti-air units the seeker and the Hawkeye. The seeker can attack both ground and air, but unfortunately its not good at either. (well except against reg infantry) The Hawkeye can only attack air units from a distance and it actually does its job. There's only 3 air units the hunter, the Falcon and the eagle. The Falcon can only attack air units, The eagle is best at killing ground units but it can attack air and the hunter is basically better than the eagle. There's only 2 transports, the mule a ground unit and the pelican an air unit and they both have as many hit points as a box of tissues. (For some reason every unit in the game dances)
There's only 2 ways to win a game, kill all your enemy's units or capturing their base. Capturing an enemy's base is nearly impossible since you usually have to go through all of your enemies units before you can get any ware near it. The other thing that makes it hard is you only have 1 infantry unit 2 if you're lucky and your enemy can just park something on they're base. Everyone's first target is usually the infantry because they die easy, move slow (despite the fact they have jet packs and ITS THE MOON!) and without infantry you can't capture factories. The factories give you extra units, but you only get units until you pull all of them out then it's almost useless. The only other use for it is you can repair units by putting them in a factory but you can't get them out until your next turn, then you can't use them for another turn after they're out. The other advantage to having a factory is you can get 2 special units a trigger and an atlas. The trigger's basically a wall and the atlas is a nasty artillery piece. The only way either of these units can move is if there loaded into a transport directly from the factory since once placed they cannot move.
The combat in military madness is flawed in o so many ways. first off you have 6 terrain types and each 1 gives you a defense % increase. The road gives you no protection but it's the only terrain you move faster on it. Ground gives you a 5% def increase, hill's give you 20%, rough ground gives u 30%, mountains give 40% and your base gives 35%. This sounds cool but unfortunately they don't help enough to make much of a difference. There's only 2 types of attacks direct and indirect. direct attacks you have to get right next to them to attack and your target can shoot back. Indirect attack's are ranged and your target cannot fire back. When your attacking you have no advantage over you target so if you have 2 evenly matched units you'll get hurt as much as you hurt them making your attack almost pointless. When your attacking if you have another unit next to the target you get 50% of their attack power added to your attack. This I liked about this game but this has a problem too, artillery cannot attack targets right next to them, yet they contribute 50% attack power which doesn't make any sense. The 50% also applies to defense when your being attack which doesn't make sense either but I'm ok with that though. The other thing about the combat that killed the game, is the unit ranks. When you kill a unit the unit that did the killing gets a rank up (up until lvl 8) which increases damage and defense. Not when you kill a whole squad just a single unit in the squad and you get 2 ranks if you kill a squad. (there's 8 units in 1 squad less units = less dmg , hit points and defense) The rank up also happens when something gets attacked. So you attack something and it gets strong HOW DOSE THAT MAKE ANY SENSE! This makes you careful about attacking with weak units and damaged artillery because you'll make them stronger if you don't kill any units but they still get a rank which is beyond all logic and reasonable thinking. Any unit at lvl 8 is extremely dangerous even a light tank at lvl 8 is as dangerous as a super heavy tank at lvl 1. The air vehicles are very over powered or the anti-air units attacks are under powered. If you attack an eagle with a Seeker you'd expect the seeker to do a lot of damage to eagle then we'll your.........WRONG!! The eagle will hurt you as much as u hurt it and that scenario is even more grim if you replace the eagle with a hunter. The falcon works better than a seeker vs a eagle but vs a hunter and your both hurting. The Hawkeye is really the only effective way to kill a hunter without getting your head blow off. The infantry, transports, hit and run vehicles and the supper heavy tank can attack air but it's almost pointless since it usually hurts you more than the aircraft and you just gave it a rank. So having aircraft your pretty much unstoppable and they can cover 1/2 of the map in 1 turn.
About the only good thing about this game is the multiplayer, but even that's messed up. When you're setting up a game you have 6, 2 player map's 2, 3player maps and 3, 4player maps and most of them are essentially the same. then you have a turn limit and the max is 30 turns before the game ends so don't expect any long games. Then you have a time limit with a max of 30 minutes, but the game won't end after 30 minutes. Instead each player has 30 mins for all their turns, and if your time runs out you don't lose right then and there but you most likely will soon after. Once your time runs out you can't move or do anything except hope the game ends and you win because u have more points which probably won't happen. (you get points by killing stuff) The 1 thing I thought was cool on the multiplayer was every game you get a unit called a commander. Before you start a game you could customize your commander with better weapons, support bonuses that nearby units get such as, more defense, attack power and so on. You can play against another player (recommended) or against a bot but you'll probably go insane because there that dumb. (advance wars had a better AI and that was a GBA GAME!)
There is a campaign which comes with a story that makes no sense that must have taken 5 minutes to think of, make and implement. (yes its that bad) It also has 2 difficulties, dumb as a box of rocks and frustratingly unfair and hard. It was like someone thought completely unfair = hard, and not "I hate this game" So plz learn from my mistake and please DON'T BUY THIS GAME! (THE LAMENESS IT BURNS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH)