Top Secret Magazine Battleship

First there was the board game Battleship, with its 2 game boards and little red and white pegs to show hits and misses. Then came along Talking Battleship, with much the same except it was played on a small electronic board. Now, continuing the Battleship saga, is Battleship for PC CDROM.

Battleship includes 2 separate games in one, or 2 separate main modes. Classic Battleship, which is the battleship you've played as a child. And there is Ultimate Battleship, which takes the game to an all new level. Adding real time strategy and more complex weaponry and complete sensor arrays.

Classic Battleship mode is played like the classic board game. You first place your 5 ships where you want them and you start the game. The 5 ships include an Aircraft Carrier, Battleship, Cruiser, Destroyer, and Submarine. Each have different hit points depending on the size of the ship. For example, the Aircraft Carrier has 5 hit points while the battleship has 2, because the battleship is smaller. Combat is achieved by a turn based system, so you take turns with the enemy lobbing weapons at each other, hoping to score a hit. The game starts when you select the first area you'd like to fire upon. This is done by simply clicking which square on the grid you'd like to place your shot. You then see a short animation of a ship or sub, firing a weapon (Missile, Torpedo or Deck Gun), and then you see an animation of the result (whether you hit, or miss). This adds the feeling of action to an otherwise action-less game, though the animations can get repetitive after playing for only 10 minutes. The game plays on until you sink the enemy fleet, or they have sunken yours.

Ultimate Battleship is quite different and can be very difficult to get the hang of for someone getting started into the game. After choosing to play Ultimate Battleship, you choose the type of scenario you'd like to play.

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You hit my battleship!

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The UB command screen

These include practice games, World Domination and Scenario. Practice is simply that, and it best used to familiarize yourself with the interface and the command options. World Domination is a complete Campaign, waging war until you complete obliterate the enemy off the face of the Earth. Scenario is a single game, which is a combination of a practice game, and the campaign missions. You can choose any of the missions you want to play from the campaign, without having to progress through the campaign itself.

After setting up the convoy formations for your multiple fleets. You start the game. This is when you'll notice the completely different style of gameplay. You start off on a large map display, showing the positions of all of your fleets and and known contacts. From here you can command your fleets across the oceans and engage in combat. Once you've detected an enemy, and begin to engage, you'll notice the classic battleship type combat. After choosing the ship, and type of weapon you want to fire, you choose where you want to fire, much like classic battleship. Much of this game is guessing, which ruins any attempt at making this into a strategy game. So basically, Ultimate Battleship is the same as Classic Battleship, just with a few real time strategy elements thrown in, which, at times can be more trouble than anything else. Since the game is playing in real time, its means you have to do things quicker, and the interface does not help speed things up, in fact its quite the opposite. The interface requires too much micromanaging, which is distracting at the worst of times.

Battleship is, despite its minor, yet nagging flaws, a good solid game which extends the board game into the computer world. With plenty of options and multiplayer capabilities, and the feel of the classic board game, its the perfect game for Battleship fans.

Company:
Hasbro Interactive
www.hasbro.com

Category:
Classic/Real Time Strategy

NOTES:

Interest: 80%
Maniability : 80%
Graphics: 73%
Sound : 70%
Originality : 75%

TOTAL : 76%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
486 DX2 66MHz or better

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
33MB

Sound Card:
100% compatible sound card

Video:
1MB SVGA video card