![]() With Dark Conflict, the setting and premise of the game’s story is much more grim, but the personality of the characters and the dialogue (oh god the dialogue) is still stuck in the realm of Saturday morning television. Advance Wars has always been one of the DS and GBA’s more hardcore games in terms of gameplay, but in terms of story, it’s always had a similar feel to the original Transformers cartoon, with a bouncy, happy, inconsequential “nothing can damper our spirits” outlook on war. ![]() The feel, look and tone of Dark Conflict is completely different to what has gone before. The gameplay isn’t the only thing that’s seen a shake up. Keeping battles to the bottom screen, trimming the unit count and, as a result, putting the emphasis more on strategy than simply overpowering the opposition by pumping out more units is a step forward for the series. Dual Strike got a bit unwieldy with battles often spiralling out of control over the DS’s two screens. This means things have been simplified somewhat, which we think is a good thing. On top of the CO and unit changes, dual screened battles have been scrapped, and, as a result, so have multi-front battles. Add to this the new Mobile Workshop, which can build temporary airports and ports, and you can see that Advance Wars’ unit roster has undergone sweeping change. But we’ve now got the Anti-Tank – does exactly what it says on the tin, Flare – a tank which can fire off a flare which removes fog of war, Missile Boat – can attack other naval units and transport troops, Fighter – medium powered air unit, and the powerful Ship Plane, to play with instead. The Black Boat, Stealth Bomber and Black Bomb have bitten the dust too. ![]() The super-powerful ground unit the War Tank has replaced the Neo Tank and the Mega Tank. We’ve mentioned some of the new units above, but there are others. The CO zone grows as the battle rages, and when it fills the entire screen you can initiate the CO power, for example boosting the mobility of direct attack ground units by two, or giving all friendly units three health points.Īll units can now level-up three times as they defeat enemy units, up to the maximum Ace level (if a CO joins a unit it gains the ultra powerful Vet status). Now, COs can merge with units on the battlefield, raising them to Veteran status and “buff” nearby friendlies within the CO-zone. The ability to “double-team” an opponent, effectively taking two goes in a row, has been removed. Where before they could use super powers to completely turn the tide of battle once they had been “charged up”, now they have much less of an impact. Gameplay wise, probably the biggest change is that the role Commanding Officers (COs) play in battle is much less significant. For you, all you’ll be interested in is the changes Intelligent Systems has implemented with Dark Conflict. This will all be old news to series veterans. It all amounts to the most complicated match of rock, paper, scissors ever. For example, certain units, infantry and motorbikes (a new unit, basically infantry on bikes), can capture enemy cities, unit producing factories, airports, ports and enemy headquarters (apart from destroying all enemy units, capturing the enemy HQ is the only other way to win a match). The gameplay is strangely addictive – simple at first, but as you play through the game’s lengthy campaign you’ll gain access to new units and learn more complicated strategy. ![]() There’s more to it that that of course, but that’s the crux of it. You need to work out which unit is best suited to tackle each enemy unit, just like wrapping paper around stone. An anti-tank unit, one of the new units introduced in the game, is great against tanks, as you’d expect, but rubbish against anything else. So, for example, a Bomber will decimate ground units with its bombs, but can’t attack air units. Each unit has a number of strengths and a number of weaknesses. The key to understanding how Advance Wars works is in the rock, paper, scissors game. That’s the essence of Advance Wars in one neat paragraph. You then take it in turns to move them about a grid, across different land types – road, mountain etc – and attack enemy units until there are none left. It works like this – you and your opponent start off with a number of units – ground, sea and air. But somehow the bods at Japanese developer Intelligent Systems has taken that simple child’s game and turned it into one of the most addictive strategy war video games ever – and we love them for it.Īdvance Wars: Dark Conflict is in fact the fourth game in the series and the follow-up to 2005’s Advance Wars: Dual Strike, also on the Nintendo DS. We were too busy practicing Street Fighter 2 moves on each other in the playground to give that boring game a chance. We never played rock, paper, scissors at school.
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