$0.99 - Xen Games Ltd. - 
- v1.4
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Strategic Assault is one of the first RTS games released on the iPhone and although the gameplay is fairly fluid and fast paced, the graphics and simplicity heavily detract from the overall experience.
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Like any RTS, this game requires that you capture resources (strategic buildings in this case), build a base and churn out glorious units. All of these functions are here and fairly easy to get to and perform. You can scroll around the map with two fingers, select units and drawing selection boxes with 1 finger and use the on screen buttons to build and group your units. It's great that two finger scrolling as been introduced, but other than that, there's really no interesting or creative use of the available touch technologies. Why does that matter? Well, without a full keyboard and large screen, you need some way to make up for it, and a few fixed on-screen buttons is not the answer. Maybe some pinching action to maneuver around the map?
So what's wrong with it? Well, let's start with the graphics. As the game was ported from older Pocket PC and Symbian mobile platforms, the graphics are not exactly taking advantage of the power of the iPhone. In fact, they are quite 80s. There is a storyline, but it's about as interesting as attending a meeting of the Committee For Paper Thickness Standards. One of the big issues is that it's just too easy to build tons and tons of units, so they end up having little value and it really doesn't matter if you loose them all. You can just keep making more. This is like battle of Stalingrad. Finally, the game doesn't really feel like it has any heart and soul. It's just a very simple clone of some of the first RTS games. Dune 2000 would have been better.
But then again, it is only 99 cents, and with 15 missions you'll definitely get your money's worth in terms of playability. At the very least, you can chalk it away to encouraging more iPhone game development.
