Platform Reviewed: Android
Platforms Available: iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Ouya
Publisher: Isotope 244
Developer: Isotope 244
Release Date: January 15, 2010
MSRP: Free (in-app purchases available)
Platform played: Android
Land Air Sea Warfare is a real-time strategy game developed by Isotope 244 for Windows, Mac, iOS and is now available for Android devices. As the name suggests, players wage a war against an enemy on land, air, and on sea simultaneously. You are in command of several different units, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The outcome of the war relies on your strategic skills as you do your best to decimate the enemy’s forces and take over their base.
In Land Air Sea Warfare, you start off with a base and a small amount of ore, the primary resource, and energy. From there, you can then further develop your base by constructing factories that produce your units and set-up defenses to protect your base from enemy attacks. It is basically an arms race as your enemy also starts with a base as small as yours that will also develop and strengthen over time. You have to construct generators such as power cells and wind turbines to provide power to your buildings and build mines to gather up precious mineral ores that you can use to construct stronger units that can give you a massive advantage against your enemy.
Once you have enough units on hand, you have the choice to go ahead and constantly storm the opposing side while they are still vulnerable or just rally up your forces in one area and order a massive attack. Just be wary when attacking, Land Air Sea Warfare’s AI is good enough to plan counterattacks, flanks, and ambushes so better set-up and strengthen your defenses first and invest on those recon units and let them roam around the map. Depending on the difficulty chosen, the enemy will be more or less responsive to attacks and more or less aggressive to initiate attacks.
Land Air Sea Warfare generates a random map for every game so that players will surely face a different challenge every time they start a new game. The press release version only had the land terrain but there will definitely be a sea map on the full game release. The terrain will certainly affect the strategy the player must use to attain victory, most especially in securing resources and area domination. The kinds of buildings and units players can make are also affected since some of it can only be placed on land or on sea.
The graphics used in Land Air Sea Warfare is based on raster graphics or bitmap graphics which gives the game kind of a retro look with the blocky and slightly pixelated art style and textures. Reminiscent of early RTS games, its visuals might give some RTS fans a bit of nostalgia but with a smoother gameplay, thanks to the game being done on a newer game engine. Props to the devs for including in actual audible voices for the units and in-game notifications as well as giving the game an upbeat background sound during a game session.
Land Air Sea Warfare works well with touch controls. It takes some getting used to on the unit selection and on what buttons need to be pushed for a command but easily doable, nonetheless. Playing the game on devices with larger display screens is recommended since there are units in the game that are a bit too small to select easily, not to mention that they also move fast. Pausing the game for a while helps when you want to select such units. Other than that, everything about the controls work fluidly. I played the game on my ZenFone 5 with its 5.0″ display and I have large fingers so it took me several attempts to mass select some units sometimes.
Now available for Android devices, Land Air Sea Warfare can now be enjoyed by more smartphone users. I don’t know about you guys, but this game just begs for a multiplayer feature, at least for LAN users. Maybe when the game gathers a large enough crowd, the devs might just be able to add in that feature in their future releases and here’s to hoping that they do. Summing it up, Land Air Sea Warfare will provide players a full RTS experience in the palm of their hands and will not disappoint the RTS aficionado and newbie alike.
Land Air Sea Warfare on Android is a great game for those who want to get their quick RTS fix on the go. It provides the players all the fundamentals of an RTS right in the palm of their hands. A must play for RTS vets and newbies alike.
Check out their feature video here.
To know more about Land Sea Air Warfare, please visit:
http://www.isotope244.com/land-air-sea-warfare.html
This review is based off a copy provided by Isotope 244.
