A lush, fantasy-laced take on the grid-based wargame
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.
I was the founding Executive Editor/Editor in Chief here at GR, charged with making sure we published great stories every day without burning down the building or getting sued. Which isn't nearly as easy as you might imagine. I don't work for GR any longer, but I still come here - why wouldn't I? It's awesome. I'm a fairly average person who has nursed an above average love of video games since I first played Pong just over 30 years ago. I entered the games journalism world as a freelancer and have since been on staff at the magazines Next Generation and PSM before coming over to GamesRadar. Outside of gaming, I also love music (especially classic metal and hard rock), my lovely wife, my pet pig Bacon, Japanese monster movies, and my dented, now dearly departed '89 Ranger pickup truck. I pray sincerely. I cheer for the Bears, Bulls, and White Sox. And behind Tyler Nagata, I am probably the GR staffer least likely to get arrested... again.
