Game Reviews

Front Wars

Star onStar onStar onStar offStar off
|
iOS
| Front Wars
Get
Front Wars
|
iOS
| Front Wars

Success usually results in acclaim and praise, but it can also mean you get hordes of people attempting to emulate your formula in the hope that they too can strike it lucky.

That's exactly what has happened with Front Wars. It's a totally blatant clone of the Intelligent Systems title Advance Wars, sharing the same gameplay and even copying that game's art style.

As copycats go, it's pretty shameless - very little attempt has been made by the developer to hide the fact that the Nintendo franchise has provided one hundred percent of the inspiration for this venture.

The only genuine difference is the setting, which avoids the fictional factions of Advance Wars and instead calls upon actual history.

What is it good for?

That's right - Front Wars takes place during World War II on the eastern front, with the heroic allies fighting against the nasty Axis powers. This initially seems like a smart move - after all, you might as well use one of the biggest and most significant conflicts in human history as your backdrop, right?

However, after a few minutes of controlling the cute, bobble-headed soldiers and the dinky, super-deformed tanks, the setting becomes a little more uncomfortable.

This was an actual war fought with deadly weapons by real people - portraying it in such a light-hearted fashion suddenly doesn't seem quite right.

In this regard, the very reason that Advance Wars worked so well is - ironically - the exact reason that Front Wars stumbles.

Lay down your weapons

Elsewhere, that are other issues. The build that we played was plagued with touchscreen problems - it was difficult to accurately tap on some parts of the display, and nonsensical errors messages were thrown up as a result ("Could not find unit 0").

And yes, we checked with other titles and they worked just fine, which rules out hardware as the problem. The mission briefings are also rather iffy, with some questionable English making them more humourous than they perhaps should be.

Even with all these issues taken into account, Front Wars manages to capture enough of the Advance Wars magic to ensure that it's still well worth a look - after all, it's not possible to play the Intelligent Systems game on an iOS device, leaving this as you best bet if you're hankering after some turn-based military action.

Front Wars

Clearly a clone of Advance Wars, Front Wars doesn't try to hide its influences. Nevertheless, it's worthy of investigation
Score
Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.