Cafe Sea Battle

The game of Battleships isn't exactly a brand new concept. So picking up Sea Battle for the first time and jumping into its Quick Play option doesn't exactly set the pulse racing, despite the fact that it looks very pretty.

For those unfamiliar with the ship-sinking one time pencil and paper-based game, you start with a grid, place your ships (which are of varying sizes so take up different amounts of squares) then set about trying to guess where your opponent has placed theirs so you can 'hit' them. On paper that's done by choosing a grid number. On mobile it's a bit slicker and you just move a cursor about to select the square you want to fire your virtual torpedo at.

It's simple stuff, although undeniably as addictive as Harvey Nichols is to a WAG. That said, we've had battleship games on mobile before (including the recently released Sea Command: Battleships) so should why you care about this one?

In a word, yes. That's because Digital Chocolate has managed to sex up the simple concept of Battleships quite a bit here, making this probably the best version to date.

It's done it largely with the addition of two elements to the game. The first is a Campaign mode in which you battle to take over an overall map, liberate towns and collect gold. The second is the fact it's part of the publisher's Café series of games and therefore includes everything that comes with the rest of the series. So you can design a character, display trophies you've won for completing achievements in the game, restyle your cafe, visit a friend's one online and, of course, play the game.

Back to the game's Campaign mode, though. This is where you can happily spend a few hours winning territory from your AI enemies and exchange gold for bigger and better fleets. When it's your turn, you move each of your ships up to three squares on the overall map, moving them closer if you like to a rival fleet, or perhaps to a town. If pirates occupy a town, you can attack it, which results in a land-versus-sea battle with one of you seeking the enemy's fortresses on land instead of ships in the sea.

Adding even more diversity is the range of special weapons each of your ships carry. Taking a turn notches up a special weapons meter a small amount and, every few turns, you get to use one of the weapons from any of your ships yet to be sunk on your enemy. These range from the Fire Ship, which guns down a whole row on the grid until it hits something, to the Scatter Gun, which scatters four random shots into an area you've specified.

The range of guns makes the game much more interesting. As does the fact that with a full fleet you can take three shots in each turn. As your fleet is diminished these are reduced, which slows the game down significantly. Battles against the AI when you're taking turns finding one more ship can get a bit boring, but such is the nature of Battleships.

Incidentally, the game's AI feels very real. It never seems to employ psychic intuition about where you've placed your ships, instead taking random shots then picking off the squares around them to suss out where your ship lies.

Of course, with Battleships traditionally being a two-player game, you can play this with two in Hot Seat mode by passing the phone back and forth.

So battleships might have been done before, but I'd say Sea Battle does it better than ever. There are enough modes, guns and collectable trophies and gold to keep the basic game interesting, but that basic game is super addictive too, not to mention well presented. If you want to revisit any game of your childhood on your phone, make it this one.