Advance Wars

GBA review by Philip Morton - Sunday 24th August 2003

To be honest, I don't play on my Gameboy Advance often but when I do it always seems to be Advance Wars that takes pride of place in the cartridge slot. I bought it with my GBA last year and its smooth graphics, perfectly balanced gameplay and wealth of game modes keep drawing me back again and again.



Advance Wars is based around the fictional conflict between the Orange Star and Blue Moon armies. The two countries have been bitter rivals for years but in the last few months border skirmishes have died down. Recently though, a bearded madman called Olaf - the Blue Moon CO (commanding officer) - has ordered an invasion of Orange Star. No reason is really given for this, but then Bomberman never needed an excuse to go round planting explosives, did he? Anyway, Olaf has seized the Alara region and your job is to take it back. As the Orange Star CO's advisor, your task is to manoeuvre troops around the battlefield, engage and ultimately destroy the enemy. Not the usual Nintendo subject material is it?

Advance Wars is a turn-based game, much like the Civilization series, where forces are moved from tile to tile around a map. The scale is such that most battles take place over a small region, equivalent to a small state or province. Fighting between these division-sized units occurs on land, out at sea and in the skies with all the associated tactics in place from ambushes and artillery preparation to street fighting and submarine warfare. Battles are won by capturing the enemy's HQ, destroying their army and, in some cases, capturing a set number of the map's cities. Terrain affects movement and vision, so troops can hide in forests or view their surroundings from mountain tops. Use of the landscape is crucial to victory and is heavily emphasised in the excellent in-game tutorials.

Whilst earlier battles start with a set number of pieces in play later engagements allow you to build your own forces to reinforce the front line. These extra units are built in factories, docks or airbases, which are either assigned to you at the start or can be captured mid-game. Funding is determined by the number of urban terrain squares held so acquiring these quickly is essential.



The COs themselves are each skilled in different types of warfare. With around ten in the game there are plenty of playing styles to suit almost any strategy. Each one also has a special power which can be unleashed after a certain number of turns in combat. These provide a brief boost to your forces allowing you to take the opportunity to punch through your enemy's lines and surround them. These powers are slightly unbalanced between COs but otherwise the commanders complement each other.

Units come in all shapes and sizes, perfectly balanced with their own advantages and disadvantages. Infantry are cheap and can capture cities, but are slow and poorly armed. Recon elements are fast and can scout the battlefield but are weak in battle. Armour is fast and effective but is expensive, while artillery is deadly but needs constant re-supply. APCs can deliver ammunition, reinforcements and fuel to the frontline, but are also unarmed. And that's just the land forces! The complexity and depth in gameplay really makes Advance Wars so absorbing and fun. There are so many ways you can play, from using lightening quick units to outmanoeuvre the enemy to utilising heavy armour to batter the enemy into submission. The choice, as they say, is yours.

The sheer amount of game modes is staggering, especially considering that it's a handheld title. First of all there's Battlefield Training, which is a set of lessons designed to introduce you to the world of Advance Wars and the intricacies of combat. Campaign is the main story mode where you fight a series of battles which accompany the slightly strange plot. Vs. Mode pitches you against up to three opponents in any of the unlocked maps and these opponents can be either human or A.I. War Room is yet another set of challenges which win you coins. These coins can be spent in the Battle Maps section where they can buy you new maps to use in Vs. and the War Room modes. Design Maps allows you to create your own battlefields with the game's intuitive editor - another astounding feat considering that it's a handheld title. Finally, Link Mode lets you connect to up to three other GBAs for some multiplayer action.



Talking of multiplayer, this is where Advance Wars goes beyond the call of duty. Every foreseeable combination of hardware and software is catered for with single console, multi-console, single game and multi game combinations all included. You've all got a GBA but you only have one copy of the game? Sorted. Only got one console, but want to play four player? You got it. Custom maps can also be used (as well as traded) and handicap matches are also included. By far the best multiplayer GBA game out there (although Advance Wars 2 may challenge it), it'll keep you and our mates playing for ages.

Nintendo have injected their own brand of vivid anime styling into Advance Wars giving an almost fun approach to what amounts to continuous slaughter on-screen. The map is full of units which bob up and down in an energetic, rhythmic fashion whilst menus also have plenty of smaller animations within them. When two units engage each other a subscreen appears displaying both forces in all their cartoonified glory. They shoot at each other and eliminated troops are whisked off screen as if a gale had blown them away. Thankfully, these lengthy battle animations are optional allowing the game to be speeded up considerably. They're well worth watching for the first few times but after a while they just get in the way of the action too much. Overall though, the visuals are some of the best out there for the system taking full advantage of the wide colour screen and relatively advanced graphics chip.

Sound isn't a neglected area either, in fact, I didn't know the GBA was capable of audio this good. The tunes that accompany the menus are catchy and relatively complex whilst sound effects are more than adequate. The hardware isn't exactly up to producing full audio, but what Nintendo have done with what's available is perfectly satisfactory.



Judging lifespan on a handheld console is difficult since gamers may not use the system for months but then play on it for three weeks straight. I only use my GBA on holiday and on long journeys, so it's not exactly my most used console. Because Advance Wars is so good though, you may find yourself - like me - playing it every time you time you pick up your GBA. There's a huge amount of game modes to occupy you including multiplayer and an excellent map editor. I don't think a guess of 100 hours for the time it would take to complete the game would be far wrong.

Like all games though, it has its flaws. The A.I. isn't bad, but sometimes it's just too predictable. The enemy will surge forwards relentlessly until either you or they are destroyed. It could use the terrain to set deliberate traps or defend important areas, but rarely does so. I'm afraid that the A.I. has robbed it of the perfect all round 10 score - maybe next time, eh? It would've also been nice to see some sort of engineer unit and the ability to 'dig in' troops, but these are merely suggestions; something for the inevitable sequels to include. To be honest though, there isn't much wrong with Advance Wars and any A.I. problems are probably due to a lack of space available on the cartridge for even more complex code.

Advance Wars really is as good as everyone makes out, with beautiful visuals, excellent multiplayer, perfectly balanced gameplay with lots to do and different ways of doing things. There's an astounding amount of depth for a handheld title and it easily outshines many console and PC titles. It's the GBA's Halo, the title that everyone should own, a definitive benchmark in videogames design.

Thunderbolt score: ten out of ten

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