iPhone Game of the Day: Mecho Wars

Game: Mecho Wars
Price: £.59/$.99
Size: 9.9MB
Out: Now

Nintendo has made roughly a zillion dollars fromthe Advance Wars games, in whichcolor-coded armies of little tanks, planes andpeopletake turns zooming around a battlefieldand unloading into one another. They're fantastic strategy role-playing games. This matters because Mecho Wars basically IS an Advance Wars game on the iPhone - it just happens to have an uniquely gorgeous art style that sits somewhere between Invader Zim and a prog rock album cover.

The neon-hued artscapes upon which the battles take place aren't the only thing that's creative here. For example, rivers and lakes freeze over at night,enabling land units to traverse them at will-until daybreak, when the icedisappears again in a potentially game-changing melt-off. True, this is a mostly plot-freeride and it's over far too quickly (though there's an add-on that provides free online multiplayer support). But the solid gameplay core and the whimsical art design that covers it are more than worth the meager price tag. We'd pay more than this for the soundtrack alone.

Above: It may play like Advance Wars, but it definitely doesn't look like it.

Above: The units include cyborg elephants, mechanical mosquitos, grinning bazookamen ... even giant barracudas.

Buy Mecho Wars from US iTunes
Buy Mecho Wars from UK iTunes

May 04, 2010

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