Review: 33rd Division - Plus We're Giving Away 4 Copies
by Staff Writer
October 23, 2009
Overview
33rd Division is a brand new take on the line drawing genre from Craneballs Studios (makers of Blimp). We gave you a sneak peek, and now it’s time for the detailed review. Your goal is to draw a path from your soldiers to their extraction point without being noticed by the enemy guards. As your soldiers progresses across the battle field you can tap them so they duck, and become unnoticeable by the guards. The game has an entire World War II theme. It becomes a real time strategy game as the playfiled is constantly changing.
Features
Two game modes are included: time and life mode. Time mode gives you a certain amount of time, and you have to save your next soldier in that amount of time. Life Mode provides you with five lives, and you try to last as long as possible. As you play random power-ups appear giving you many abilities to really enhance the game. There are eight in total including score bonuses, invisibility, and life/time bonus. Online High scores are provided using OpenFeint. Four maps are included at launch which is a great feature, rather than having to wait on updates. The four maps are spread across Europe straight out of WWII. Each map is unlockable after the first one given to you. There are three type of soldiers you command, infantry worth 1, medic worth 2, and general worth 3. There are also four types of enemies, regular guard, guard with dog, long scope, and motorcycle. When you make it to 200 points Mortar Fire begins, and a sudden death mode will pop-up with a 10x multiplier.
The Good
33rd Division brings a fresh take to the super tired line drawing genre. Once you get past landing planes and docking boats everything else just seems boring. Craneballs studios has finally found an idea that reinvents the wheel. The game takes you into the movie The Great Escape, and you truly feel a connection with the soldiers running for their life. When a soldier is stuck in an enemies green field of vision, you truly feel bad as they’re shot, and their dead body lays on the play area. While you’re playing, the play field is constantly changing requring you to constantly change your path to the extraction point. The enemies move around, new enemies come in, and most of the time you have to duck and wait it out. The ducking feature really makes this game stand out, as you actually care to get you soldiers to the other side.
Like I said in the sneak peek, rather than mad flicking at the screen, you actively think of the best way to get your soldiers across the area. This is the thinking man’s line drawing game, and has the best gameplay of any line drawing game to date.
The game is absolutely wonderfully designed, from the menu screen to all four maps. Each map whether you're in France or Italy all of the details in the surroundings are exemplary.
As you draw the paths, when your finger goes up against a building or wall, the path goes right up against it automatically. You will spend a lot of time with this title just because its fun, but there is also plenty of things to do as well.
You can compete for online highs scores for all four maps for both gameplay modes. Also you have to reach certain point plateaus to unlock the new maps. Even in the game as you progress you unlock mortar fire, and sudden death mode.
