Battle Boats 3D

In these days of 3D movies and next-generation Nintendo handhelds, it’s important to make one thing clear from the start: Battle Boats 3D is 3D in the same way that Duke Nukem 3D is...or rather isn't.

The rest of the game's title is 100 per cent accurate, though, since the game is indeed about boats that battle.

Battle Boats 3D proves a decent diversion, but it’s crying out for a lot more polish to be regarded as truly great.

Each level of the game takes place in a circular battle arena, filled with rocks and other ships. In these realms, you’ll be asked to perform various missions, from shooting down all the opponents to protecting a target or capturing the flag.

The action is controlled by tilting the phone to steer your ship, while your main gun auto-fires when enemies come into view.

You activate more advanced weapons like rockets, torpedoes, and mines by tapping the screen. This generally works quite well, and as the game automatically calibrates to your current grip at the start of each mission, you’re rarely caught out by iffy controls.

The main meat of the game comprises three (pretty short) campaign modes for different factions and a survival mode to see how long you can last.

You can upgrade various parts of your ship, and will spend a fair bit of time weighing up whether it’s worth buffing up your shields at the expense of manoeuvrability.

Where the game loses marks is through a lack of polish. Hitting rocks and obstacles, for example, doesn't bring you to a painful halt, but leaves you sort of bobbing underneath / through them at a painfully slow speed.

In addition, the upgrades shop is confusingly laid out, with no real instructions given for what you’re doing in there or for how you pick things.

Perhaps the weakest area in Battle Boats 3D, though, is to be found in the AI setting: certain protection levels can be won by simply hiding in a corner, while enemy ships seem to find it harder to hit you when you’re sitting still.

In terms of presentation, it’s not too bad. Graphically, it feels akin to a PC game from the turn of the century, all sharp angles and shiny but unvaried surfaces.

The sound is par for the course in mobile games, but turning it off makes the game a lot harder to play - you really need to hear when shots are being fired to make a sharp turn and save your skin.

Despite its many small issues, Battle Boats 3D remains a competent and enjoyable game. The campaigns are fun and entertainingly written, if a little cheesy, while the survival mode gives you something to keep coming back to, with an achievements system that encourages repeat plays.

Hopefully, the game will get updated in the future, but for now it just falls short of a Pocket Gamer Bronze Award.