Price: $2.99 Score: 10/10 Category: Games
Let’s cut to the chase and answer the question posed above. Great Little War Game by Rubicon is exactly what it claims to be.
In the tradition of streamlined tactical classics like Military Madness for the TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo’s Advance Wars series, Great Little War Game delivers an experience that is welcoming to genre newcomers, easy to get into and enjoy, yet provides hours of strategic entertainment.
Even better, this is one game that actually benefits from the iOS interface. The lack of buttons serves to remove all barriers between the player and the battlefield. Instead of remembering button layouts and functions, players need only to tap on the troop or item in question and plot out their path to victory.
In Great Little War Game, players will go from one battle to the next, each with different requirements for victory. In some levels, the goals are as simple as defeating all enemy troops. In others, you’ll need to protect your general no matter what the cost. And in others, you’ll need to take over the enemy’s supply chain, and so on. The game does a wonderful job of slowly acclimating the player to the controls and concepts behind the game, beginning with simple missions and a small selection of troops, snipers, and engineers. Eventually, you’ll be capturing enemy oil rigs, using tanks, artillery, and other elements of war.
Using the touch screen, you’ll be able to plan your moves by checking the move and attack range of your troops, make purchases at your base and, thanks to a new update, check the move and attack range of your enemies. The latest update has also added an “undo last move” feature, fixing the lone major gripe I had with Great Little War Game.
The missions are spelled out prior to each level through amusing dialog between the smug and single-minded army general and yourself. This humor is carried on through the graphical style, as Great Little War Game eschews the gritty, real-world representation of war for a more cartoon caricatured style. It results in the game being quite clean and functional, making such factors and terrain and distance easy to read and plan ahead for.
Bottom Line: The answer is yes, Great Little War Game is just that: a well-designed and enjoyable tactical war game perfect for those who enjoy the lighter side of virtual warfare.
Great Little War Game is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.