Review: Moon Colonization
Score:
70%
There's not a huge amount of choice for fans of real-time strategy games, but thankfully Net Lizard, with their release of Moon Colonization, have provided genre afficianados with a compelling game that manages to balance all the required elements, albeit saddling the title with a slightly ropey fictional framing device.
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B-movie science fiction clichés ahead! And if there's something that you all know I love, it's the clichés. Net Lizard have loaded up Moon Colonization with more than enough to keep me going. The viable near future scenario goes something like this - the Earth is relying on the Moon for resources to keep the population alive, and the coalition of powers on the moon have started fighting over the Earth's satellite.
All the scene setting aside, this is a good old fashioned Red vs. Blue real time strategy game. The initial levels start with little more than a handful of infantry troopers around a little base, and you'll need to expand with reactors (for power), more buildings to build tanks and transports, and a mysterious barrack block which creates soldiers out of thin air (my money is on rapidly accelerated genetic clones, but there are a variety of Sci-fi plot devices that you can use). Money is important as well, because each construction requires some funds, I'm assuming for raw materials and to buy enough fuel for the reactor. Tapping on your buildings will pop up a menu so you can decide what to build. Then you have to wait.
Being a "real time" strategy game, you'll have to wait for the items to be constructed. While that's going on, you can be moving the rest of your army around the lunar landscape, some into defensive positions, some ready to spring an attack, and maybe the occasional blitzkrieg strike into a carefully selected area of enemy troops.
Controls are all pretty simple and obvious - tap on one of your units (be it vehicle or soldier) and you get a little cursor around it. Tap on the screen where you want the unit go, and off it goes, making it's way across the desolate landscape. It's all very intuitive, and there's nothing to catch you out. If you need a "radar" of the landscape for an overall view, that's just a tap away on a button at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps the only quirk in the game is that Moon Colonization is locked into portrait orientation, so you'll always have nothing more than a detailed, yet thin, slice of the battlefield to look over.
As with most games in this genre, you'll need a few attempts before you can fully appreciate what is going on, what sort of damage you can cause with the various forces open to you, how fast they can move, and how much you need to hold back for defences. Thankfully, for Moon Colonization this takes maybe three attempts at the opening levels, with everything (at least for me) clicking into place on that third attempt.
While those first levels can be played through relatively quickly (sub ten minutes), this isn't a quick game to play, you will need to concentrate 100% on the later levels to make the best use of your time, cash and resources. Moon Colonization manages to get the balance just right in terms of attack/defence/growth.
Even with the basic nature of the graphics (the animation of the soldiers trotting across the lunar landscape is not the sort of march that would inspire fear into an opponent), the different combat units can be easily picked out, and battles will not be lost because of mis-identification.
One of the fun things about the game is the multiplayer option. Because of the real-time nature of the game, you can't share a single handset and pass it around to your opponent. Luckily, Net Lizard have thought of that and allow two opponents to play over Bluetooth, on the same levels as you get in the single player game against the computer AI. Naturally, this makes things much more interesting, and it's here that the Ovi Store comes into its own - getting the second copy of the game onto the other handset is just a click (or two) away. Gameplay and user interface is identical, but now you have the added dimension of your opponent being in the room.
I know I said this was a B-movie at the start of the review - and I'd put the game in the B-list as well. It's not going to convert anyone to the real-time strategy genre, but if that's already your thing (as it is mine), then Moon Colonization is going to be a title you'll want to download.
-- Ewan Spence, May 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at