Battleship: Alien Invaders, Not Your Parents’ Game of Battleship
Battleship: Alien Invaders ($1.99) by CODESPOT is a puzzle game that puts you in the seat of a naval combat ship as you try to destroy your enemies before they destroy you. Tap into your military strategy skills to stop a full-scale alien invasion.
The screen is a grid that represents the potential movements of an oncoming alien ship. Players must predict the pattern that the ship will use to approach and send missiles at a precise moment to destroy the enemy ship in order to move on to the next level.
The game starts with a series of glowing red dots that appear on the grid in a specific pattern. Players watch the pattern to learn potential movement of the enemy ship and launch missiles at a square that they think the ship will move to next. The first level is fairly simple. The enemy ship travels in a straight line. Each new level involves a more complicated pattern that becomes harder to predict.
The key to a successful hit is timing. Not only do you have to predict the enemy’s next move, but you have to tap the missile launcher in the lower-right corner at the exact moment to make sure it gets to the ship just as it is arriving at the predicted point. If you launch too soon or too late, even by a fraction of a second, you’ll miss. Players only have four missiles, so they must plan their attack carefully or they may run out of ammunition before achieving a direct hit.
This game can be frustrating if you don’t understand how the missile launcher works. I even thought there was something wrong with it at first. It seemed like I would send a direct hit to the enemy ship, but nothing would happen. I was able to figure out that the missile launch button blinks and makes a noise at the exact moment that it should be tapped. Before I discovered that, my weapon would hit the square at the wrong time and my attack would fail. Pay close attention to the blinking missile launcher, as well as the enemy’s movement pattern, in order to be victorious.
Even though it was confusing and irritating at first, the game ended up being fun once I figured out the semantics of the missile launcher. It is an interesting game of strategy prediction with complex patterns and detailed graphics. The price is twice as much as it should be. If the developers drop the price to $0.99, it will be a great buy for anyone who likes predicting patterns.
