Battleship is published by Activision. For those who are fans of the Call of Duty series, this game should be right up your alley as we all know how good the series is. The game is developed by Double Helix Games and is based on the Film Battleship (2012) directed by Peter Berg and is in cinema’s now (not that that’s important anyway).
So, I got this game through the post via Absolute Gaming c/o XCN. So as with every review, we will start with a massive thanks to the Xbox Community Network (XCN) for giving us the chance to see the game and play it.
You must know right from the off that the game is a single player game so for those of you expecting multi player online action, sorry, theres none of that on this one. To be perfectly honest, I was expecting at least a co-op opportunity with friends to be able to enjoy online. Perhaps I was expecting abit too much from a game based on a movie.
I was going into the game knowing absolutely nothing about it. But from the cover I figured that it was humans vs aliens and a first person shooter as well.
When you start the game you are presented with a quick video and a menu giving you the option to start the campaign or view settings and credits. Very simple and straight forward.
On I went with the campaign. First you are presented with a difficulty level. I Selected Medium as I am still an amateur at first person shooters. The scene then starts off with what looks like “space junk” or something entering through the earth’s atmosphere from space and crashing into the sea. As we know its humans vs aliens, you think immediately, “here come the aliens”. But wait! Whats this? I am waking up? But actually looks like im woken up by a colleague who gives a shout to the head of the team (of soldiers) “I found him sarge! Sleeping!” The first thing that crossed my mind is, why on earth would I be sleeping? That also behind an army tent and in a bush? Weird. We’re on an island of some kind that’s for sure. Anyway, I run up to the sarge (Vikkers) who is explaining in a round about way that im the man for the job and whats going on. He also gives me whats called a “Battle Com”. This gives me the ability to control the battleships and request them to position themselves strategically in certain places around the island to provide fire support for the ground troops. He then sends me on my way to diffuse some bombs around the island. Apparently im the best bomb diffuser on the team. Is that my job? Diffusing bombs? What about killing aliens? And shooting? Wheres the action? This is already over 5 minutes into the game! I was fast losing interest. But I decided to stick with it to see where it leads. Most gamers decide within the opening 10-15 minutes of playing the game if they will carry on or pull out. And there are many many games out there on the market that fail to please the hard core gamers. And I had a bad feeling that this was going to be another one to bite the dust.
The Action!
After diffusing a few bombs I needed to use C4 to destroy a non-diffusible bomb. Well, that taught me how to use C4. Which then made me think that it could be teaching me as we go along. Next task was to learn how to use Battle Com. Reposition ships to provide some support with the ground troops clearing some thing or another. I didn’t quite catch the mumble of Vikkers. Successfully accomplished that.
Now is when the action comes. A shout from Vikkers says that we are under attack and we have to move to the other side of the island. I didn’t have a gun, I only had battle com. I ran and followed other soldiers (who had rifles by the way). Have to add here that there are waypoints to follow as well which is an added plus.
Something along the way really disappointed me though. Although the waypoints are a good thing, you cannot “stray” from the path as there is an invisible boundary which you cannot cross. So you cannot fall off the cliff unless you are meant to. This was very annoying.
Along the way, there is a haze and I get caught by an alien! Looking me dead in the face. I pull out a gun from somewhere (probably had it in a holster that I couldn’t see), and blew its head off. I now had a pistol. There was a second alien hiding behind a rock and it kept shooting at me. Took it out with a headshot, knicked its weapon and I was on my way again following soldiers whom I could not keep up with nor run past! Mind you the weapon I was carrying seemed really sophisticated.
The Alien!
OK, lets go to killing more aliens. You get commands from other soldiers around you however to me it seemed that I was killing all of the aliens attacking. Yes, my colleagues were shooting as well but whether they were hitting their targets or not, im not sure. I had 300 rounds of ammo.
More alien killing as the game went along and it advances slightly where you actually start to move the ships to positions to support you as well as destroy an alien comms device / base. Later on you get to also request an airstrike to open up a cave and also get to actually destroy an alien vessel that’s on the water from one of the ships. This is by use of Battle Com and a collected “Wild Card”. I am assuming that you get more perks and collectibles along the way, however, by this point in the game I was already bored of the story line. I sort of knew what was always coming next. Shoot aliens to clear the field, run, run, run, then come against another wave of aliens dropped by an alien ship on the island and clear the path again and the same on the cycle goes on.
So as we can see from this description above, most of the actions are carried out by you as an individual rather than you helping your team. The way I see it, they have tried to make the single player mode as interactive as possible, however it lets you down by making you do absolutely everything.
Moving on to the graphics. Lets just put it this way, don’t expect to be comparing this to the likes of Call of Duty or Gears of War or any other FPS out there. This graphics feel like as if the game has been abit rushed and not much thought has gone behind it. It would make a great game to play if you have nothing in the tray however I don’t see it replacing the games that are already successful as first person shooters. I will probably give it another go at some point in the future but it will not be anytime soon. Yes, I am a tough customer when it comes to games as I lose interest pretty quickly. However, if a game does catch me off guard, I will finish it (the story line that is).