or How I stopped worrying and loved blasting spaceships The deep space has always been a source of imagination for millions of people of all ages. The idea of battling alien invaders with high-tech spaceships has been present in our entertainment for years and fascinated thousands of creators.
Battleships Forever is a RTS game staged in outer space in which you assume the role of a captain, controlling squadrons of battleships ready to protect the innocents and blast space pirates and evil aliens into flaming debris. Tactical combat lies at the core of this game, so strap in and fire up your boosters; the battle is about to start.
Throughout this grind, I will be referring to the player as “he” but this is only a matter of simplicity. The context applies to both male and female player.
Off to battle aliens in a far away planet...
The emotional side of war
How
Battleships Forever makes the player feel throughout its gaming experience? In this section of the grind, I will look at the emotional content of the game.
Motivation The player’s goal, the story, the originality and the emotional involvement of the player in the virtual universe all affect how the player will desire to play the game. When mixed correctly, these elements will hook the player for hours.
Goals Battleships Forever offers a good deal of goals that will keep the player motivated throughout the experience.
The game offers
- A very large variety of ships to try and learn
- Many game modes
- A fair amount of campaign missions
- An interesting storyline
- A good share of battle strategies
In terms of level design, the missions focus on many different aspects of gameplay found throughout the game without becoming laboured, which is quite hard to pull in a tactical game such as this one. The game could use more goals linked to other elements then the ships you control, such has saving lives or gathering valuables but I will tackle this topic later on in this grind. As of now, the game offers enough goals to motivate the player efficiently.
Originality and Storyline It is hard to be completely original when developing the theme of space warfare.
Battleships Forever still manages to offer us something different without feeling too much like a déja vu.
The storyline behind
Battleships Forever is a bit clichéd but at the same does a good job in involving the player in the virtual world. Right at the beginning of the first mission, the player is given a forced moral choice: listen to HQ or save the innocents in need. Unfortunately, the player cannot decide for himself whom to follow, which would have been quite interesting, but it still helps the player to feel like being part of this world: if he had followed orders, hundreds of lives would have perished. Just that little mission makes the player feel important and heroic, even though the task was simple and easy to overcome.
Battleships Forever does not offer the best storyline ever created but offers enough content to make us want to know what happens next.
Then headquarter tells you to abandon innocents to space pirates... | | Emotional involvement
The player’s role within the virtual universe of Battleships Forever is a tad nebulous. The player is given a title right off the bat but is not explained exactly in what type of hierarchy he evolves in. The player will be able to understand the basics of the universe but not the details. It would be a good move to deepen the whole universe and position of the player within that universe in order to involve the player emotionally a lot more.
Battleships Forever offers many motivational elements and involves the player emotionally in its universe but the game could push the concepts further by adding more depth to its storyline and universe details. |
Intuitivism The goals are always clear for the player and their solutions are very intuitive. The player always knows what to do and how to do it. Controlling the ship is easy and the interactive elements react accordingly to the player’s action. One part where the intuitiveness of the game could be better is in the feedback given when using functions in the in-game side menu. Most clickable icons do not seem to react when interacting with them and their effects on the gameplay are not obvious to the player. In many cases, clicking an icon will raise more questions than give answers. In the end,
Battleships Forever is quite intuitive but would need to add more feedback when using the in-game side menu icons so that the player always knows what is going on and what effects his action had on the game.
Experimentation level The game offers a good depth as of now but could easily become deeper which would make mastering this game a lot more challenging, simply by concocting new strategies. Due to its open-ended challenge solutions and the possibility to tackle a mission with different ships, the avatar and level experimentation of
Battleships Forever is quite interesting. The game easily allows the player to go through the different challenges offered using different elements or by using different approaches.
Battleships Forever offers many variations on its strategies but would truly benefit from new, completely different tactical possibilities in order to deepen the gameplay, allowing a much stronger mastership. For instance, the game could allow the player to use pieces of fallen ships to protect or damage the ships of enemies. More on that topic later on.
Graphic and sound direction The graphic direction taken in Battleships Forever fits perfectly with the gameplay. The detailed characters and backgrounds mixed in with vertex-like spaceships give a nice blend of high-tech and realism. The color scheme and general interface used makes everything feel surreal but believable at the same time. The explosions are very rewarding and the fact that the player can alter its own ship color gives the game some extra points. In general, the art direction works very well. The only obvious problems one can find in Battleships Forever are that many message boxes and sub-menus found in the game use standard windows graphics and many fonts used in those message boxes and menus clash with the rest of the game’s fonts.
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Satisfying... |
In terms of sound and music,
Battleships Forever also does a great job to immerse the player in the right mood. The only complaint one could have is that the game could feature more tracks but even then, there is no actual need for it. The sound effects really add to the mood and are quite rewarding.
So, to summarize, the general direction taken with the graphics and sound in
Battleships Forever fits the game like a glove except for some little snags here and there, like message boxes and fonts that uses common window resources.
Immersion In terms of immersion,
Battleships Forever offers a very simple yet effective control scheme and a good continuity. Everything works fine and fits together. In terms of information presentation, the game’s tactical core demands a traditional approach so the energy gauges displayed over the ships do an excellent job in blending the information into the game while still making it immersive. The character dialogues, displayed as distorted holographic messages, truly helps the player to immerse himself in the virtual world. The console-like messages appearing on the screen whenever something happens actualy deepens this immersion by giving the feeling to actualy be at the control board of the ship. On the other hand, the side in-game menu can sometimes feel intrusive. Since it is occupying a lot of room on screen, there are moments when it feels like it is blocking our view on the game. But, even with this problem, the game remains immersive.
Fairness Battleships Forever feels like it offers a rather fair experience. Most of the time, the player has access to many resources to beat the challenges thrown at him. The difficulty is in most case just right and the player never feels like the computer is using elements that the player cannot.
The main menu
The tech side
Now that I've looked on how the game make us feel, it's time to look at how it was crafted. In this section of the grind, I will take a look on the technical side of the game.
Mechanisms The majority of the game mechanisms found in
Battleships Forever offer enough feedback so the player always knows if his actions changed something in the game world. For the exception of the lack of feedback when using icons in the in-game side menu, all actions taken by the player have enough clear feedback to indicate what has been changed.
Prepare for the Grindonator! | | Economics
In terms of economy, the game doesn't offer much to the player. The main economical element found in the game is, of course, space ships that the player can control. The game could use deeper economics that will enhance the gameplay. As of now, most goals found in the game are tied to the ships available to the player. It could be interesting for the game to include more economical elements, such as a currency or the number of innocent lives you saved, in order to give more motivational factors to the player. The game offers a good amount of goals but, since thy are mainly associated with ships, these goals become less interesting with time.
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Flow, Stability, Ergonomics and accessibility In general,
Battleships Forever is quite a well-crafted game. It is stable, the flow of screen is easy to understand and use, the game is easily customized and adaptable to the player's taste and needs. Apart from minor interface bugs, such as having the Windows toolbar appear on top of the application when launching, the game runs without any problems.
The big picture
So, yeah,
Battleships Forever has a few issues here and has some good qualities, but in the end, does it work together? I enjoyed the game but I felt like this was a quick pick-up-and-play game rather than a long-term strategy game: I didn't feel like the game had enough depth to become a long-term startegy game. This doesn't mean that I did not have fun blasting off aliens and living out the storyline, it's just that I wished for more meat to sink my teeth in.
Personal suggestions
In this section, I will list a few ideas I had while playing the game. These are personal suggestions that are partial solutions to issues I have raised in other sections. I will also deepen my thoughts on previous suggestions written earlier in the grind.
- Battleships Forever could push the goals further by adding replay value in missions. As of now, the missions are linear but adding bonus or secret missions that do not alter the main story could be a nice addition to the game. Adding more types of missions could also help this situation.
- The game also lacks a bit of depth when it comes down to possible strategies when fighting others. Even if the game offers many strategies, it the end, they all felt like a variation of one main strategy. In itself, it is not much of a flaw but this leads, unfortunately, into a failure to grab diversified types of players and mainly focuses on one. For instance, a strategy could involve creating spacships while inside the game or another strategy could focus on using the debris to the ship's advantage. In all cases, perhaps adding strategies that require les sthinking and some that need more preparation could satisfy more types of players.
- The in-game side menu could be semi-visible whenever the mouse isn't over it. This way, the player would not miss the action behind it and would not feel like it's taking up too much space all the time...
- The game could try to develop the human side of the whole game. For example, in the missions where the player has to protect other ships, it could be interesting to know how many lives the player has saved. Perhaps adding the concept of having a crew on-board could add more humanity to the experience. Loosing guns and parts of the ship would mean loosing crew members and in the long run, the player could become attached to the characters "working" on his spaceships.
- The general storyline could explicitly tell the player where he stands in the game's hierarchy. The player knows he is a capitain but how important is this title? What are the players responsabilities? Implicating the player in the military structure featured in the game's storyline could enhance the player's immersion and emotional attachment.
In conclusion...
Battleships Forever is a game that
- Offers numerous game modes and in-game goals
- is still original even though it uses a very popular theme
- features a clichéd storyline but still manages to involve the player emotionally
- is intuitive and fair
- has interesting representations, in both graphics and sounds directions
- is well crafted
- offers a lot of customization
but
- could use more depth
- could add more replay value in the levels
- could add more feedback in the in-game menu
- could use a review of all graphic elements, such as menus and pop-up windows, so they all fit together
I enjoyed playing
Battleships Forever and creating all sorts of spaceships in the editor. The numerous game modes kept me busy for a while and in the end, had a real blast. If the game would push the envelop further, it would end up greatly enhanced. I feel like the game just needs a few more elements here and there to truly glue the player to his chair.
Thank you for reading! Before I sign off, I'd like to send special thanks toward Derek for his wonderful input on this grind. Be sure to try out the game (just click the title image)! And now, time for the traditional...
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