Military Madness: Nectaris sticks by the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The upcoming PlayStation Network/Xbox Live Arcade/WiiWare game felt just like the first TurboGrafx-16 game because its a remake of sorts.
The title updates the 16-bit game with 3D graphics and utilizes the same hexagon grid battle system. If you didn’t play the original think Advance Wars with more directions to move in. You position tanks and planes to crush all your enemies.
There are some differences between Military Madness: Nectaris and Military Madness. To make the online mode less like chess players get a customizable commander unit in multiplayer missions. Before battle each player distributes the commander’s points to purchase abilities. Some of them are buffs that can affect multiple units, while others turn the commander into a fighting machine.
Speaking of online play Hudson thought of creative ways to prevent battles from dragging. You can set a number of rounds before a match starts. After all the rounds are over the game calculates who wins by the amount of units destroyed, buildings captured, and so forth. However, that doesn’t prevent slow play or griefers from “hanging” just to annoy others.
Hudson also has a speed mode where each player starts with a set amount of time. Let’s say ten minutes. In this mode you have as many rounds as you can squeeze out of ten minutes. You can waste all of your time in your first turn which would give your opponent a full ten minutes worth of rounds to destroy your forces.
Published: Aug 5, 2009 07:00 pm