From the Manufacturer
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You loved the classic naval strategy game. Now there are
three ways to play it. Locate and while
real-time video displays your hits and misses. Take charge of
naval fleets equipped with cruise missiles, torpedoes, and NAVCOM
surveillance systems in advanced play. Your radar blinks. Think
fast! The survival of your fleet hangs in the balance.
Review
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"You sank my battleship!" Ah, the sounds of childhood
Saturday afternoons and a really memorable ad campaign. Dense
blue plastic, knobby little red and white pieces (which the dog
always tried to eat), and really strategic guesswork. Now that
was fun.
Rather than simply relying on nostalgia to sell games, Hasbro
develops, tweaks, adds, and replots the game until you have not
only the standard Battleship, but also World Domination mode, air
warfare, naval warfare, helicopters to fly, islands to defend,
oil rigs to protect, and enemy submarines to torpedo. Some great
visuals accompany an intuitive interface and suddenly the game of
childhood afternoons becomes the one of
I-really-should-be-working adult afternoons. This is a strategic,
real-time wargame, and one thoughtful enough to include both host
and guest CDs so you'll always be able to attack your friends.
While there can be no doubt that Hasbro has added extraordinary
depth to this game, there is one big, fundamental flaw: the
"Classic" game. This is the game you'd expect - the direct
translation of the Battleship you grew up with to the PC screen.
Fire missiles into enemy waters and hope you hit your nent's
aircraft carrier; little gridded squares turn white when you miss
and red when you hit. And when you hit, you're treated to a
cutscene with a dramatic explosion of your weapon of destruction
hitting the enemy ship.
However, the Classic game springs a serious leak: no strategy.
Not an intensely complicated game with intricate strategic
developments to begin with, it's now just a guess-fest. The
reason for this? You can't turn your boats lengthwise. Try as you
might, you just can't. Sure, you can move your boat from one end
of the grid to the other, but only horizontally. Try to flip it
around vertically and you'll find yourself frustrated. And if
that wasn't bad enough, those dramatic cutscenes also show you
which of your nent's boats you just hit. So when you fire
your first missile and see it hit the aircraft carrier squarely
in the middle, you know you have to hit it exactly four more
times to make it sink. Same thing holds true for the submarine,
the battleship, and the rest.
The Classic game, though, serves as training for the meat of
this modern Battleship - which is a simple real-time war game.
You construct fleets and send them out to accomplish a particular
goal, and you must stop your nent from doing the same. It
works pretty much like the Classic game ( and fire) but it's
in real-time (meaning you don't take turns). There are several
variations on this theme, but it's all pretty much a super-vamped
version of the classic board game.
One thing that is noticeably lacking is a detailed and complete
manual. Granted, serious wargamers will be able to catch on to
the premise pretty quickly, but lots of the folks who buy this
game are old-school, plastic playing board game folks, and a
little extra help couldn't hurt.
Hasbro Interactive's Battleship HITS with depth and strategy
(and a cool opening sequence), but MISSES on the classic level.
--Moira Muldoon
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