iPhone

Having given up on the Lite version (for now), I started on the full game. Jumped into story mode and my heart sank a bit when I saw that the first map is the same map that’s included in the Lite version of the game. Still, I won it easily and then moved on to chapter two, which – gasp! – features a whole new map. Ooh. It’s sandy.

I won that one without any hint of a problem, too. I hope story mode gets difficult enough to be fun before it’s over.

(Slight confusion: In the story you play the red guys, whereas I’ve been playing as the green guys in Free Play mode in the Lite. It’s made for some interesting “WTF?” moments.)

I also had a quick look at Free Play mode. As expected, it’s more of a Skirmish mode than the mission-based Free Play mode of the Lite version. You choose a map and then configure the number of sides, items, difficulty, etc. There are medals to earn, but they seem a bit pointless when you can set the options to give yourself an advantage. Hopefully some of the later maps will have medals for winning a game under certain option set-ups.

I’ve got to level twelve now, I think, in Free Play mode. It’s the first of the five star difficulty levels and I’m having a hard time completing it. There aren’t any special conditions, it’s just about killing the enemy, but even when I seem to be doing well, somehow my opponent manages to turn the tide against me. I’m really not sure how; I don’t think he has any more power ups than me or anything.

It’s all very interesting and I hope I can work out what I’m doing wrong – or what he’s doing right. More likely, though, I’ll eventually just win without being sure why or I’ll give up and move on to the full game.

I’ve put hours into this now. Hours. It’s probably one of my most-played iPhone games and I’ve not even got the full version yet. I spent a long, long time trying to get a medal on the fifth Free Play mission, which requires you to capture every base within thirty turns. Winning the game wasn’t hard, but doing it within thirty turns – and making sure I’d captured all the neutral bases before finishing off the enemy – was very tough. I kept finishing in thirty-two or thirty-three turns, but couldn’t get it down any further.

Until, somehow, I managed it twenty-three turns. I think I shouted out in my victory and may have punched the air. I seem to remember having to explain to the wife why I’d startled here.

The most important thing to do when you need speed is to make sure you’re constantly moving troops around. On a time limit you can’t afford to keep troops in reserve behind your front lines, no matter how tempting it is to leave some defenders just in case the enemy breaks through. Also, if you know you’re going to lose a base to the enemy, you’re better off retreating before they arrive, so you’ve got more men available for a counter attack. And you really have to make good use of the power ups that you’ve been given and not leave them in reserve until it’s too late.

It’s brilliant game and I’m definitely going to get the full version. I’ve been planning on finishing off all there is to do in the Lite before buying it, but I’m not sure that’s wise. It seems sensible on the surface, but the Lite version is getting very hard indeed now and I really don’t want to find the full game a pushover when I get to it. It might be better to have both and swap between the two. (The Lite version features content not in the full version, by the way. I think the Free Play mode in the full version may be closer to a Skirmish mode than the mission-based structure of the Lite, but I’m not sure.)